Who we are
Our team has 250+ years of combined experience leading nonprofits as executives and board members. Helping your nonprofit is not a job, it is a mission for us.
Meet the Team
Brian Backe, MBA
Executive Director, Center for Nonprofit Leaders
Brian’s mission is to help nonprofit board members and senior staff evolve into highly effective servant-leaders so they can improve the social, economic, racial, and environmental fabric of our world. He has 40 years of experience as a senior leader and board chair/member in eight different nonprofits, from a local food bank to a five-million-dollar fair trade enterprise to a global international development organization.
Brian brings a friendly and supportive blend of coaching and consulting to our clients. He specializes in walking alongside nonprofit leaders as they move through leadership transitions, board development, organizational planning, 360 evaluations and other elements of organizational development. His focus is on the long-term goals and mission of the leaders, leaving them stronger, more joyful, and capable of moving forward independently.
• Former Senior Director for US Programs, Catholic Relief Services, Westminster, MD
Specialties: Leadership Coaching, Executive Transitions
Marv Baldwin, MA
Senior Associate
Marv Baldwin's 35 years of leading and serving in the for-profit, non-profit and government sectors include 32 years in leadership roles, 19 years of being the top leader of an organization, and 50+ years of experience in board leadership on 6 NFP boards, including 3 board chair roles.
Marv's background is varied with a breadth of experiences in leadership development, coaching, financial management, strategy, new business development, fundraising, partnering, client support, pastoral counseling, and spiritual direction.
Marv's expertise includes working with top executives, philanthropists, elected officials, business leaders, farmers, community leaders, activists, religious leaders and academics. The variety of views, knowledge and experiences imparted by these leaders has been a gift to Marv's deeply curious nature. He stands ready to share all he has learned with others.
Marv comes to the CNL ready to help fellow leaders in their efforts to live out their compassion as they strive to build a more just world for all people. The path of compassionate action can be bumpy, challenging, and at times, brutal. Marv has learned to accompany people as they bravely follow their calling to serve those that need loving support.
• President: SoulJourneys
• Former President and CEO, Growing Hope Globally Western Spring, IL
Specialties: Executive Coaching, Self-Care
Jim Lund, MA
• Consultant
• Former VP for Development, Bread for the World
Specialties: Fundraising Consulting
Senior Associate
Jim Lund's 40 years of work in the non-profit sector includes 20 years of staff and executive work on the programmatic side, followed by twenty years in fundraising. Jim’s professional mission from now on is to apply his experience and learning in the development realm to help nonprofits secure the resources they need to make their dreams come true.
Twenty years in fundraising provided opportunities to experience notable success in individual and executive roles, leading to leadership positions at Catholic Relief Services, and Bread for the World.
At CRS, Jim began his work as a major gift officer. His appetite for learning the profession led him to seek out the insights of leading experts in the field. That drive to learn from the best and apply it to his own work has been a feature of his 20 years of work in the field.
At CRS Jim secured the first $1 million gift from an individual in the agency’s history. His instincts for fundraising leadership eventually lead to his promotion to become a leader of a major gift team. Then for the last four of his thirteen years at CRS, he served as Vice President for Charitable Giving. He led a department with 37 staff members responsible for individual major giving, planned giving, and foundation and corporate giving.
Jim moved on to become the Vice President for Development and Membership at Bread for the World, a D.C. based organization working to end hunger in the United States and abroad. He led the fundraising efforts there with a team of twelve to fifteen people to ensure annual goals were met to provide Bread for the World with the resources needed to carry out its mission.
Most notably, his time at Bread for the World included leading a successful $79 million capital campaign.
Jim is also an author of numerous articles and the co-author of the book Moving Faith into Action.
He currently serves as Chair of the Development Committee of the Alliance to End Hunger, and is a member of the development committee of the Catholic Mobilizing Network. He previously was a member of the board of the Ignatian Volunteer Corps, Just Faith, and Interfaith Worker Justice.
Rev. Ojeda Hall, MDiv
• Executive Director, One Love Foundation, Maryland/DC Region, Baltimore, MD
• Former VP for Development, Bread for the World
Specialties: Leadership Coaching, DEI
Senior Associate
Rev. Ojeda Hall joined the One Love Foundation as Executive Director for the Mid-Atlantic region in January, 2019. Before joining One Love, she was the Senior Director of Collective Action for Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE).
Rev. Hall trained as a community organizer for 11 years with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), the nation’s oldest and largest organizing network. She was Lead Organizer for Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) in Baltimore, where she helped leaders win $1 billion for new school construction.
Her other organizing accomplishments include developing the Rochdale Early Advantage Charter School in 2008 in Jamaica, Queens and the Turnaround Tuesday Jobs Development Program in Baltimore City.
Prior to her work organizing communities, she climbed the corporate ladder in investment banking both in New York and London, was a government appointee as Executive Director of the Office of Family and Community engagement for the New York City Department of Education and served as Development Director for a non-profit organization in Brooklyn. She also served as Youth Pastor at the Bethany Baptist Church of Jamaica, Queens where she led the effort to re-organize the youth ministry and grow it from 15 to 45 regular participants.
In August of 2009, she was featured in the New York Times “One in 8 Million” Edition. She has served on numerous boards for credit unions, charter school and afterschool programs.
Rev. Hall holds a Bachelors Degree in Government from Harvard University and a Master of Divinity Degree (Summa Cum Laude) from the Drew Theological Seminary in Madison, New Jersey. She has studied Afro American Studies with Dr. Julian Bond and focused on race, class and gender studies throughout her educational life.
Rev. Hall was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in Brooklyn, NY where she attended Brooklyn Friends School. She lives in Baltimore, MD where she is an Associate Minister at New Psalmist Baptist Church leading their Local Missions & Outreach teams.
Sergio Lopez, MA
• Sr. Trainer for Leadership Development, Catholic Relief Services
• Lecturer for Pastoral Leadership, Loyola Marymount University
Specialties: Organizational Leadership, Servant Leadership, Faith-Based Activism, Awareness-Based System Change, Peaceful Masculinities
Associate
Sergio Lopez is a husband, a father, a contemplative social activist, and a leadership educator with more than 15 years of experience supporting people-powered social change initiatives. Sergio’s mission is to leverage the power of the soul to help changemakers and their organizations build their capacity for creating a more just and compassionate world.
As a Sr. Trainer for Leadership Development at Catholic Relief Services, Sergio is responsible for leading the agency’s efforts to inspire and train volunteers to grow in their capacity and identity as leaders by designing spaces and facilitating learning journeys that transform volunteer supporters into servant leaders for the global common good.
In addition to working at Catholic Relief Services, Sergio also teaches pastoral leadership at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, serves on two educational non-profit boards, and holds an MA degree in Organizational Leadership from Gonzaga University as well as an MA degree in Religious Studies from Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles. He specializes in the areas of organizational leadership, servant-leadership, faith-based activism, awareness-based systems change, and peaceful masculinities.
Sergio, his wife Ellie, and their family live in the Greater Los Angeles area.
• Vice President of Consulting, FareStart
• Former Managing Director, Catalyst Kitchens
• Social Impact and Enterprise Executive
Specialties: Social Enterprise, Program Development, Social Impact Scaling, Workforce Development, Leadership & Social Entrepreneurship Coaching
Senior Associate
Renée Martin
Renée Martin is a nationally recognized expert in scaling business and social impact with over twenty years’ experience leading strategic expansion and partnership development work across sectors.
As Managing Director of Catalyst Kitchens, a national nonprofit member network focused on reducing poverty through social enterprise job training and employment within the food system, Renée led through a period of dramatic growth and transition, paving the way for the network to become an independent entity.
Prior, Renée led international sales and expansion at Corbis, a Bill Gate’s owned global media company.
Today, Renée leads FareStart’s national consulting practice that has advanced economic inclusion and mobility in over 150 communities across the country, in forty-six states, by advising and coaching the leaders of over 250 nonprofit organizations.
Renée also serves on the Executive committee of the board of directors for Ventures, a nonprofit that empowers aspiring entrepreneurs with limited resources and unlimited potential.
She has a BA in Political Science and English Literature from Boston College. Renée is also a graduate of Leadership Tomorrow, a civic engagement program focused on advancing racial equity in the Pacific Northwest.
Renée lives in Seattle, Washington with her partner Guillermo.
Benjamin Manuel
Backe
• Former Communications Professor, Towson University
• Communications contractor working in both the for-profit and nonprofit sector
Specialties: Public Speaking Training and Coaching, Writing/Editing, Communications
Associate
Ben Backe is, first and foremost, a teller and consumer of stories. It is within each of us to tell a truly compelling story. Ben has made it his mission to listen to the narratives of others, and to help them share it. Showing our truth to others is one of the most profound things we can do, because once we see the world through another person’s eyes, we can never go back to how we were before.
Kevin Lamb
• Certified Professional Coach
• Former Senior Advisor for Strategy and Organizational Effectiveness at Catholic Relief Services.
• Former Assistant Dean for Planning and Institutional Effectiveness, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar
Specialties: Certified Professional Coach with extensive experience coaching social entrepreneurs, organizational leaders, and teams.
Senior Associate
Kevin Lamb is a certified professional coach with extensive experience coaching executives, social entrepreneurs, and teams. Kevin holds graduate degrees from Harvard University and Case Western Reserve University, and he has focused on planning and organizational effectiveness throughout his career. From 2014 to 2019, he served as the Senior Advisor for Strategy and Organizational Effectiveness at Catholic Relief Services. During this time, Kevin provided coaching and leadership development to over 400 leaders and staff members in the U.S., Africa, and Asia. He is certified to administer and facilitate Everything DiSC®, a personal and team development assessment that measures workplace behavioral characteristics, preferences, and tendencies.
Kevin spent 19 years in higher education planning and institutional research at Carnegie Mellon University including seven years where he played a lead role in the planning and start-up of Carnegie Mellon’s branch campus in Doha, Qatar, as the Assistant Dean for Planning and Institutional Effectiveness. His efforts to establish a meaningful and manageable program of assessment and institutional effectiveness were significant in the success of the campus start-up.
Prior to his seven years on the Qatar campus, Kevin served as the Director of University Planning at Carnegie Mellon’s home campus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for 12 years. He developed a reputation for effective planning and analysis, including facilitation of planning processes inclusive of all relevant stakeholders. He led studies in strategic planning, organizational development, governance, facilities planning, and administrative operations. He also played a lead role in planning and establishing Carnegie Mellon’s Silicon Valley campus at the NASA Research Park in Mountain View, California.
Council of Advisors
Kate Hull
Maryland Nonprofits
Accreditation and Recognition Manager
Baltimore, MD
Keith Timko
Support Center of New York
Executive Director
New York, NY
Terese Coudreaut
John S. & James L. Knight Foundation
Vice President/Administration, Secretary to Board of Trustees
Miami, FL
Brian Corbin
Catholic Charities USA
Executive Vice President
Alexandria, VA
Sherburne Laughlin
American University
Professor of Arts Management
Washington, DC
Juancho Bierlein
Coley Government Contract Services
Senior Associate
San Antonio, TX
Rod Brooks
Innovative Strategies Consulting
Chief Executive Officer
Raleigh-Durham, NC
Let’s get started
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