About Us

Allison Duncan is the founder and CEO of Amplifier Strategies. She advises leading organizations working at the intersection of philanthropy, investing and innovation. As a serial social entrepreneur, she co-founded Uplift, a collaborative initiative for poverty alleviation, Impact Atlas, a technology platform for personalized mentoring programs, and Battery Powered, one of the largest and fastest-growing giving clubs in America.

Since 2007, Amplifier has activated more than $500 million and launched new ventures, portfolio strategies, and cutting-edge solutions for influential foundations and organizations around the world. Its clients include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Erol Foundation, The Skoll Foundation, The Libra Foundation, Battery Powered, Arcus Foundation, Resources Legacy Fund, Swift Foundation, BRAC, Barefoot College and The Nature Conservancy, among others.

Allison began her career in philanthropy with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. She served as the Program Director for a $400 million environmental investment and as the Director of Program Finance, where she created a practice to conduct due diligence, measure outcomes, and structure $1 billion in grants and program-related investments. Prior to joining the Moore Foundation, Allison worked at Deloitte in the Carolinas, Russia, New York and Silicon Valley.

As a Partner and Head of Digital at Amplifier, Chantal Buard uses the power of visual storytelling and technology solutions to accelerate the work of mission-driven organizations. She oversees a staff of designers, developers and content strategists to build effective and inspiring digital and communications products. In addition to steering visual design, Chantal leads both the engineering and the digital product development teams. Chantal has more than 20 years of experience in digital media production, combined with a lifelong interest in mission-driven work.

Before coming to Amplifier, Chantal founded Mana Productions in 2005, an audiovisual and design production company based in San Francisco, which merged with Amplifier in 2012. As a Media Producer for NBC/Quokka Ventures, she co-produced the online version of NBC’s coverage of the Sydney and Salt Lake City Olympics. Her expertise in design and video revolutionized the use of the Internet as an integral part of a worldwide media event.

Chantal’s diverse experience includes extended time in Tanzania where her documentary stories were featured by France Television. Through the non-profit Picture Earth, she worked to popularize the work of the world-renowned French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand in the U.S. Chantal graduated from the Sorbonne and holds an MBA from IAE, Aix en Provence and York University, Toronto, specializing in Media and Arts Management. Originally from Paris, France, Chantal has been living in San Francisco for nearly 20 years.

As the Chief Operating Officer of Amplifier, Elizabeth Pavageau applies her extensive experience in growing the impact of global businesses to our team-focused social impact and strategic philanthropy. She is responsible for seamlessly scaling the teams, business processes and infrastructure, while deepening and expanding client relationships. With nearly two decades of experience in driving cross-functional alignment and facilitating successful global business efforts, Elizabeth excels in developing new business models and positioning companies for greater growth and impact.

A senior executive with expertise in business operations, sales, technology, customer support, finance and human resources, Elizabeth’s background encompasses global start-ups and corporations specializing in mobile, digital advertising and technology platforms. Prior to joining Amplifier, she served as Vice President of Ad Solutions for Placecast, launching the company’s successful mobile advertising line of business and generating over $5M in revenue within its first 18 months. She also served as Head of North America Business Strategy and Operations for InMobi, supporting the company’s 10x growth over four years. As Head of Finance and Business Operations for Datapop, she tightened the company’s finance and business operations processes to secure its Series A round.

Earlier in her career, Elizabeth held various sales and operations roles at Yahoo! and Hewlett-Packard, among others. A San Francisco resident, Elizabeth graduated from Duke University and earned her business degree from ESCP, one of the top business schools in Europe.

Todd Thille has more than 20 years experience programming for the web. He leads a global team at Amplifier, working on a wide array of platforms for mission-driven clients. Todd has developed and maintained sites for Technicolor Creative Services, WGBH in Boston, United Church of Religious Science. He has also created code projects for The Grammy Museum, ESPNZone along with developing independent iOS applications. Todd has experience with documentary filmmaking, video editing, print design, interface and user-experience design, photography, and audio recording. He is an Apple Certified Trainer and a contributor to several open source projects. Todd holds a BA in Art Practice from University of California, Berkeley.

Nicolas Funke is a dynamic, full-stack, software engineer, with cross-sector experience across the IT industry since 2010. The French native joined Amplifier to apply his expertise to vital projects of social, global change. He has developed websites for Amplifier, the Skoll Foundation, The Fish Hub and Barefoot College, among others. Before coming to Amplifier, Nicolas worked as a technical project manager for Limonetik. Nicolas has a double master’s degree from Oxford Brookes University specializing in web technologies and philanthropy.

Jailan leads strategy for Amplifier’s philanthropic partnerships, and plans and executes internal strategic initiatives to build the agency’s capabilities. She is a social impact strategist who believes in the power of business to tackle and solve complex global challenges, and she brings over 10 years of experience building the capacity of impact-driven initiatives around the world.

Prior to Amplifier, Jailan managed international development, corporate responsibility and employee engagement programs for Fortune 500 companies in emerging markets as Director at PYXERA Global. She also worked with Fortune 200 companies to develop, implement and scale corporate engagement initiatives as a Senior Consultant at Taproot Foundation.

Jailan holds a BA in International Affairs and a Masters in Tourism from The George Washington University.

Jill Minkus has the distinction of being the first new hire for Amplifier dating back to 2008. She has since been involved with most every client to partner with our firm. She works with large foundations, nonprofits and mission-focused businesses on strategic planning, evaluation, performance measurement and fund development. Past and current clients include Erol Foundation, Battery Powered, The Gates Foundation, Resources Legacy Fund, The Nature Conservancy, California Ocean Science Trust and Environmental Defense Fund. Prior to coming to Amplifier, Jill performed similar work for The Hiles Group. She has a master’s degree from U.C. Berkeley and a bachelor’s from Reed College.

Alexis builds strong relationships with our philanthropic partners and engages with them on funding strategy, due diligence and evaluation. She joins Amplifier’s Philanthropy team with 10 years of experience leading strategic philanthropic initiatives. As Vice President, Community Affairs at Northern Trust, a financial institution based in Chicago, Alexis directed corporate resources to support nonprofit organizations around the world with a focus on education, human services, the arts and workforce development. She also worked with the company’s philanthropic families to support and promote their successful giving. Alexis has been personally involved with organizations supporting environmental conservation, young women’s mentorship and education.

Alexis received her BA in Psychology from the University of Virginia.

Kari Davidson joined the Amplifier design team to help bring Impact Atlas to life and will continue to steer it through its Beta development. Before coming Amplifier she worked with Microsoft’s design team for Windows 10 and the company’s wearable fitness and health platform. Prior to Microsoft, she served as an intern with Nike on the better world brand team. The Portland native moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington and play soccer. She was the team’s goalkeeper, captain and first-team all-academic honoree before graduating with a bachelor’s in Visual Communication Design. While still in college Kari co-founded the social enterprise Haiti Babi, which empowers women to keep their children out of orphanages in Haiti by creating handmade artisan baby products.

Florin Tarnovanu has built web applications and deployed server services for more than 10 years. Based in Romania, Florin joined the Amplifier team to work on developing apps that will change the world, including the latest Beta release of Impact Atlas. Before Amplifier, he maintained the servers, infrastructure and code contributions for Austrian and German government platforms. He routinely works his way through bash commands, monitoring services, syncing databases and implementing new features for open source platforms.

Flavia Halatiba is a web developer based in Romania. She has worked on a range of projects for Amplifier including the launch of Impact Atlas. She has become a drupal enthusiast over the past three years. She has contributed to diverse and complex projects for the Austrian and German governments and the University of Toronto, among others. Flavia has been responsible for the development of web applications using Open-Source Technologies, PHP, Javascript as programming languages and database manipulation in sql.

After two summers interning at Amplifier, Blaire will continue to support the team as Community Design Intern. In this role she works with the Communications teams on Marketing and Operations. Blaire joins Amplifier with experience in the private and nonprofit sectors. Previously, she led a successful online campaign to raise money for KIPP Bayview Academy’s library, and interned at Singer Associates Public Relations and Public Affairs in San Francisco. She graduated from Elon University with a degree in Strategic Communications and Business.