Project Leader Biographies: HandUp Congo

Secretary/Director Lucy Hobgood-Brown has lived and worked in nine countries. Her career has included working as a journalist and university teacher, and she is now using more than 25 years of communication management skills to foster capacity-building projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she and and her sister, Anne Zolnor, grew up. Lucy lives in Sydney, when she is not working on community development projects outside Australia. An Australian-American dual citizen, Lucy has Masters degrees in International Communication and International Social Development. 

Chief Financial Officer/Director Anne Zolnor brings more than 30 years of experience in clinical, managerial and consulting experience in healthcare to development projects in the Congo, where she grew up. She is the oldest of HandUp Congo's founding sisters, whose grandparents first came to Congo in 1912. A manager with Accenture, the international consultancy, Anne is on the road year-round. She enjoys linking her professional and organizational skills to HandUp Congo's projects, and taps into her international network to increase awareness of Congo's needs. Anne has a Master of Business Administration from Jacksonville University, and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Texas Christian University.

Chief Executive Officer/Director Betsy Brill has mastered multiple disciplines in journalism and communication--from daily photojournalism to business magazine writing and editing to publication design to marketing publications specialist. With her husband, photojournalist and professor Ken Kobré, Betsy spent more than a year of travel researching and writing about microfinance approaches in Egypt, India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. Among other articles resulting from the year's journey, her five-part series on the topic for the San Francisco Examiner was a Pulitzer nominee and a runner-up in the Pen West awards for non-fiction.