Meet the Staff

Lisa Woll, CEO

Lisa Woll is CEO of the Social Investment Forum (SIF). Prior to SIF, Lisa was executive director of the International Women’s Media Foundation, an international organization seeking to strengthen the role of women in the news media around the world and to protect press freedom. Lisa has extensive experience in international and domestic social policy and has worked extensively around the globe on human rights issues, particularly children’s human rights. She was the director of the first international study to look at the impact of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and directed the Washington, DC office of Save the Children, She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. She is also Board President of Women’s Voices for the Earth, a national environmental health organization based in Montana, and a Senior Fellow with the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) Civic Leadership program. She has written and spoken widely on human rights, human rights and development, as well as leadership.

She has also worked on a wide range of social policy issues in the United States, as executive director of Friends of Vista, as a legislative assistant in the U.S. Congress, and as a New York City Urban Fellow. Lisa is the founder of Suited for Change, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization that provides professional clothing and ongoing career education to low-income women who have completed job training programs and are seeking employment. She was a founding board member and former president of the board of The Women's Alliance, a national membership organization of community organizations that increase the employability of low-income women. 

In 2001, Lisa was named a Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian Magazine in recognition of her pioneering role with Suited for Change. She has received numerous other awards and has volunteered on numerous other nonprofit boards and commissions. Lisa holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Illinois and a master’s degree in public policy and women’s studies from George Washington University. She spent 1990 – 1991 in Melbourne, Australia, as a Fulbright Fellow.

Meg Voorhes, Deputy Director & Research Director

Prior to joining the SIF staff, Meg Voorhes directed environmental, social and governance research for RiskMetrics Group’s Financial Research and Analysis division.  There, her duties included editing Corporate Social Issues Reporter, a monthly journal, and heading the firm’s Sustainability Task Force.  For much of her career at the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC), which the Institutional Shareholder Service unit of RiskMetrics Group acquired in 2005, Voorhes specialized in issues related to multinational investment in South Africa.  From 1990 through 1996, she directed IRRC’s Southern Africa Service. 

In 1997, Voorhes was tapped to direct IRRC’s Social Issues Service, where she coordinated the organization’s research on the environmental, human rights and other social issues raised by shareholders at U.S. companies.  She co-edited the 1998 book, The Sweatshop Quandary:  Corporate Responsibility on the Global Frontier.  From 2001 through 2003, Voorhes served as a judge for Social Accountability International’s Corporate Conscience Award.  She is a graduate of Wesleyan University and earned a Master of International Public Policy degree from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Peter DeSimone, Director of Programs

Peter DeSimone has worked on sustainability issues for more than 14 years. He began his career at the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC), where he advised investor clients on the challenges and opportunities posed by a post-apartheid South Africa. He also developed proxy voting guides for several emerging markets during the 1990s, helping foreign investors vote their proxies in these countries for the first time. He has advised institutional investors about voting on social and environmental policy shareholder resolutions throughout his career, convering a wider range of issues, including water, land and energy resource management, recycling, product toxicity, pollution and toxic spills, climate change, indigenous peoples' rights, community displacement, supplier labor standards, equal employment opportunity, and HIV/AIDS.

Peter went on to head up RiskMetrics Group's labor and human rights research. He played a key role in establishing RiskMetrics' first global sustainability product, coordinating the development of the indicators for the project and creating and conducting training programs for staff researchers in Asia, Europe and North America. He also managed the direct corporate engagement efforts for a diverse group of clients, including a major US foundation, a global hedge fund and a Dutch asset manager. He is an honors graduate of The American University with dual majors in international development studies and economics.

Sylvia Panek, Assistant Director of Operations & Development

Sylvia Panek, a graduate of Illinois State University, obtained with honors a dual BS in International Business and Marketing, plus a minor in Spanish. She worked at the Nonprofit Financial Center in Chicago, an organization focused on educating and assisting nonprofit organizations to operate with security on limited budgets. In 2005, Sylvia joined the socially responsible investment division at Green America and transitioned two years later to serve as Program Coordinator for the Social Investment Forum. She is currently the Assistant Director of Operations and Development, which includes management of the Forum's working groups.

Kristin Lang, Assistant Director of Communications & Public Affairs

Kristin is the Assistant Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the Social Investment Forum.  After graduating from the University of Virginia with degrees in International Relations and German, she spent nine months working abroad in London and Dublin. Her previous nonprofit experience includes internships with the Red Cross in Vienna, Austria and with Lynch’s Landing, an organization focused on downtown revitalization in her hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia.  Kristin joined SIF in 2007.