Dr. Ramatu Bangura

Executive Director

Dr. Ramatu Bangura has served as the executive director of the Children’s Rights Innovation Fund since its inception in 2020. A highly collaborative leader, she oversees all aspects of the fund’s design, global strategy, and growth. As the inaugural executive director, Ramatu is building a community of advisors, partners, and allies to collectively realize CRIF’s promise to shift lasting power and resources to children and youth activists around the world.

Ramatu is a lifelong advocate for justice, bringing 25 years of experience working with and on behalf of adolescent girls and youth in New York City, Washington DC, and as a Peace Corp Volunteer in Costa Rica. Most recently, she served as a Program Officer for the NoVo Foundation’s Advancing Adolescent Girls’ Rights initiative, where she co-led strategy development and grantmaking to advance the largest portfolio in philanthropy dedicated to the rights, leadership, and well-being of adolescent girls in the United States and in the Global South. Across her career, she has engaged in organizing, advocacy and research on a host of issues impacting transnational girls, including early and forced marriage, sexual violence, trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, and educational access for English Language Learners.

Ramatu earned both a Masters of Education (EdM) and Doctorate of Education (EdD) in International & Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is deeply committed to decolonizing philanthropic practices to ensure that those most impacted by structural violence and oppression are afforded the tools to create a world where all are safe, seen, and celebrated.

Gabrielle Bailey

Senior Program Officer- Grantmaking & Constituency

Gabrielle joins the team as the Grantmaking Innovation Officer with multiple years of experience in the grantmaking space. She first started in local grassroots activism and later in grantmaking panelist roles for the “With and For Girls Collective”, and the “Global Resilience Fund”. She has represented her peers, organisation, Barbados’ youth and feminist movements globally, advocating for gender justice, LGBTQ+ rights, environmental sustainability, and youth development.  At CRIF, she is working to ensure that the grantmaking policies and actions truly place power and resources in the hands of youth activists in ways that uphold the organisation’s values and inspire change within the philanthropic community. 

Gabrielle is currently pursuing an MSc in Development Studies, with a concentration in Social Development Policy. She is passionate about mental health, and believes in a more equitable ‘tomorrow’ for us all, and is proud to hold hands with others to work toward that goal, through focused, determined and joyous resistance.

Juhi Jha

Program Officer - Learning, Data and Storytelling

Juhi is CRIF’s  Program Officer – Learning, Data and Storytelling. She brings to the team her vast experience as a theatre maker, writer, researcher and director.

Juhi uses narrative based research methods to make small, quiet and sparkling in the dark theatre to promote reflexivity. She has a BSc in Psychology, an MSc in Employment Relations and HumanResource Management. She currently leads the development and management of CRIF’s learning community using an innovative data and storytelling approach.

She founded the Project Motley in 2012, which she ran in Delhi for 7 years. As a part of this project, in 2016, she conceptualised and facilitated Trauma Lens – to help organisations think about and adopt trauma informed approach.

Recently, she conducted a narrative based research with artisanal fishers in Seychelles to develop recommendations for policy and management around sociocultural wellbeing. She is fond of creating imaginary worlds and characters with children in her neighbourhood in Seychelles most afternoon.

Theriyeh Koroma-Nenneh

Communications Officer

As CRIF’s Communications Officer, Theriyeh comes to this role experienced in the blend of social and behavioural change communications, feminism activism, writing, digital content creation and management, and youth engagement in nonprofit organisations.

She has experience working with UN agencies, national and International NGOs as a Communications Associate/Manager.

She works to manage the wellbeing of CRIF’s overall communications strategy and digital presence. She is a writer and founder of the “Warrior Radicalo” blog where she has demonstrated passion to echo social justice issues for positive impact and call to action.

Theriyeh has a keen interest in radical activism, being the Founder and Team Leader of Feminists United Sierra Leone, a collective movement of young social change actors revolutionising the feminism agenda in Sierra Leone. 

She is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Gender and Development Studies. She has a special interest in bringing to life voices and stories that are at the vulnerable edge of marginalisation and discrimination.

Betsy Peréz

Program and Events Coordinator

Betsy Peréz, is a writer, performer, sexual wellness educator and now CRIF’s Program and Events Coordinator. She was born in the Dominican Republic/Haiti and raised in the South Bronx. Her love for production and events was cultivated as a teenager involved in theatre organizations that educated the community about HIV/AIDS and sexual health through storytelling and later, as an adult where she continued acting, playwriting, producing live storytelling events, production assisting and coordinating for mission driven film projects.

Betsy’s desire at CRIF is to be one more present adult on the team, as well as to continue supporting, producing, collaborating and strategizing collectively to create opportunities and events invested in honoring the lives, minds, and voices of children and youth globally.

She has a profound love for humanity, listening to the coming of age stories of adults who realize they have an inner-child, mathematics and metaphysics.

Katherine Mendoza-Wright

Program Associate - Constituency & Administration

Katherine Mendoza-Wright (she/her/hers) is CRIF’s Program Associate – Constituency & Administration. She graduated from The George Washington University in 2017 with a degree in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and is currently pursuing her MPH in Health Communication & Promotion and Sex, Sexuality, & Gender at Boston University’s School of Public Health.
With years of youth development and public health experience joining CRIF, Katherine previously served as a program coordinator for an adolescent health initiative at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. She is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, having served as a Peace Corps Community Health Promoter (Peru 2017-2019) where she mentored and trained youth leaders in a rural Andean community.

In college, she trained and led various cohorts of young people in community engagement projects.

A passionate feminist, youth advocate, and public health organizer, Katherine is committed to deconstructing barriers for informed, healthy decision-making. She believes that institutional and political reshaping led by youth voices will bring us closer to this reality.

Katherine is a first generation American, with familial roots in Valle del Cauca, Colombia and Villa El Salvador and Apurímac, Peru. She lives with her partner and dog in Brooklyn, NY.