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Celebrating Our Women Leaders

on  March 8, 2021

Today, March 8 is International Women’s Day!

This is a special day to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women around the world. And, it’s also a call to rally for gender equality and awareness about global women’s issues.Here at Rise Against Hunger, our mission is focused around support for the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger, which has a direct relationship to SDG 5: Gender Equality, and the empowerment of women and girls. Our Pathways to End Hunger promote education and training opportunities for women and girls, helping them reach their full potential and setting them on a course for lifelong self-sufficiency. While great advances have been made for women’s equality in the last century, women still face significant underrepresentation in our daily lives and workplaces – including here in the U.S. and globally.In honor of International Women’s Day, we’re taking time to recognize four phenomenal women leaders who serve here on our team at Rise Against Hunger. These talented women fight hard each day to create opportunities for thousands of other women and girls around the world, and represent a small snapshot of all the amazing women leaders at Rise Against Hunger. Let’s get to know them!

  • Isabel Garcia Atienza, Community Engagement Manager

Originally from Venezuela, Isa brings an expanded worldview and global perspective to her Rise Against Hunger role leading community engagement and volunteer experiences in New England. Her passion for children’s causes ties directly to our mission’s impact, including healthy nutrition for school children in remote communities. Isa was recently selected to also chair and lead our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council.Isa’s challenge to celebrate women: “I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family where I was taught that I could do anything I set my mind to, but as a woman, I know all too well how society has been structured in a way to create obstacles for women, and worse, to pin women against each other. We must be willing to stand up to injustices and band together to make sure that all girls and women out there can grow up knowing that they can shatter glass ceilings and be the best they can be.We all deserve to be heard. We must look within ourselves to find the courage to stand up for others. To elevate one another. To celebrate one another.”

  • Liza Munson, Senior Manager, Global Corporate Partners

A collaborative nonprofit fundraising professional, Liza leads and directs our Global Corporate Partnership team to generate funding for our mission and sustainable, life-changing opportunities for the people we serve. In addition to her global fundraising efforts at Rise Against Hunger, Liza’s past work experience includes serving in a development leadership role at one of the most highly respected voluntary health organizations in America, and leading donor campaigns for NGOs in South Africa and Geneva.Liza shared what she personally champions to support women’s empowerment: “I celebrate women’s achievements by making an effort to applaud and support other women in their personal and professional endeavors. I try to do this both with women I know personally, and those I don’t. I try to listen with an open heart and open mind and remember that everyone’s perception is her reality. The past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to audiobooks and podcasts by and for women. Some of my favorites have been Michelle Obama’s book Becoming, Gabrielle Union’s book We’re Going to Need More Wine, and Glennon Dolye’s Untamed. They were all interesting and insightful, but Glennon really rocked my world!”

  • Latoya Gillyard, Manager, Major Giving

Latoya’s passion for community and youth empowerment began 15 years ago while working for a youth development center that supported at-risk children in Philadelphia. She has been a leader in Rise Against Hunger’s development of a volunteer outreach and engagement program where her creativity and infectious spirit for our mission made an incredible impact. Recently, Latoya embraced a new role and responsibility for the cultivation and stewardship of donors with an appetite and capacity to invest in our mission. This passion for community empowerment is displayed in her personal life where she co-leads a women’s fellowship group at church.Latoya’s personal perspective on gender equality: “Daily, I celebrate women because conscious and unconscious bias is prevalent throughout our society. No matter your age, level of education, cultural background, ethnicity and/or gender shouldn’t hinder the professional and personal growth of anyone. I challenge you to use every opportunity to uplift, encourage, inspire and celebrate women not one time a year, but every day by simply shining your own stage light on them privately and publicly. Dr. Dorothy Height said, “˜I was inspired by Mary McLeod Bethune, not only to be concerned but to use whatever talent I had to be of some service in the community.’ This quote keeps me going when I find myself having a rough day trying to break down barriers and still be passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion for all.”

  • Megan Wolf, Regional Community Engagement Manager

As an AmeriCorps alumnus, Megan has a passion for community service and special experience in empowering high school students to reach their full potential. This provided Megan with an ideal foundation for engaging Rise Against Hunger community volunteers to rally support for global school feeding programs, encouraging under resourced students to attend and stay in school. She now champions a full regional team of our community engagement leaders throughout the Southeast U.S.Megan offered her personal insight on women’s equality: “Gender equality isn’t just important for women, it’s essential for any community to be sustainable, to create economic prosperity and allows everyone to flourish. It’s important for me in my role to identify, celebrate and increase visibility of achievements of women on my team to showcase to current and future staff that women have a place at the table, even if they haven’t seen representation there before.”Let’s keep the dialogue about gender equality going long after today. Share your own personal stories and perspectives with your colleagues, friends and family and invite others to participate in the conversation. This is only one day in a movement that should happen every day of the year. Please join us!

About the Author

Maggie is Rise Against Hunger's Director of Marketing and Communications and has been a team member since 2016. Maggie works to spread the word about the mission to end hunger and to engage people globally to take action.

More Posts by Maggie Luckadoo

Strength, Stability And Hope

The gift that filled Nelly’s table.

“We were yielding very little, and the crops could not sustain us the whole year,” Nelly remembers. As a mother of seven and a farmer with two decades of experience, the stress of inconsistent yields was all-consuming. A poor harvest not only strained her family financially, but also limited their own meals to just two a day. Their story reflects that of many in their fishing and farming village near a lake in the Karonga district of northern Malawi. Here, heavy rainfall makes conventional farming methods nearly impossible. The entire village is, quite literally, saturated in food insecurity — a reality that leaves families struggling to survive season after season without a dependable source of nourishment.

In 2019, Nelly began participating in Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience, a sustainable agriculture project implemented by Rise Against Hunger in partnership with the Foundation for Community Support Services (FOCUS). The project works with 3,100 smallholder farmers in Malawi’s Karonga and Mzimba districts to strengthen food and nutrition security by improving production methods, nutrition practices and household income.

Just one year later, Nelly was ready to expand the variety of crops on her farm. What land once only produced maize began to flourish with sesame, cowpeas, rice and groundnuts during the rainy season (summer), as well as maize and vegetables during the dry season (winter). Through climate-smart agriculture training, she learned new techniques like manure making, pit planting and mulching, crop rotation and intercropping. Equipped with these tools, Nelly’s farm began to thrive.

After the 2023–2024 growing season, she sold enough produce to purchase an ox cart. Her harvests in 2024-2025 season yielded over 500 pounds of crops, including 22 bags of groundnuts, seven bags of maize, 12 tins of sesame and three bags of rice. With this surplus, she was able to invest in a motorbike, which she now uses to transport African doughnuts (mandasi) that she cooks and sells — creating yet another source of income for her family.

The transformation reaches far beyond her finances. Nelly now has the stability to provide for her husband and children. “I am able to eat different food types, pay school fees for my children and fulfill the visions that I have made with my family,” she beams. “I am now sleeping peacefully without any fears of food or paying school fees for the children.”

Her leadership has also grown. Today, Nelly serves as a leader in the Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience project, teaching other farmers in her district to adopt climate-resilient, labor-saving practices. By sharing her knowledge, she is multiplying her impact — empowering her neighbors to experience the same transformation she has achieved.

Across Nelly’s community, food and economic security are on the rise. Lombani, a government extension officer for the region, explains, “I can see the community is being transformed in the sense that in the area, there is food, income and nutrition security. Development is also happening at the household level.”

Nelly reflects on what it means to invest in holistic programs that address the root causes of hunger: “We are now healthy people. Children are going to school after eating their breakfast, having high yields and different types of crops due to conservation agriculture practices. With the support from the project, we have food, and we can access other food items from the market after selling our produce.”

This is the gift that fills: a future full of stability, strength and hope. It fills tables with food, families with security and communities with the resources to thrive. It’s an investment in futures rooted in resilience and hope.