Finance and HR Administrator

Danielle Sims Montgomery

Danielle has worked for more than 20 years in administration, bookkeeping, and Human Resources. She has her Masters Degree in Psychology and has earned her Professional Human Resource Certification. She specializes in working with small organizations and non-profit industries and has a passion for helping youth and young adults reach their full potential. Favorite Quote:  If you do not have a goal, you are just complaining! In her free time she enjoys spending her free time with her sons and her husband of 29 years.

Founding Executive Director

Emma Mayerson

Emma Mayerson is the Founding Executive Director of Alliance for Girls (AFG), the nation’s largest membership association of girls-serving organizations. Under Ms. Mayerson’s leadership AFG has become the nation’s largest regional alliance of girls’ organizations, working collectively to ensure girl-serving organizations are more connected, more effective and better able to prepare the girls of today to be the leaders of tomorrow.

Prior to AFG, Mayerson was a community organizer for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, and worked in development for the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco and the Women’s Foundation of California. She has also served on the Board of Directors for Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, ProjectGlimmer, and the Jewish Community Federation’s Impact Grants Initiative.

Mayerson is a recipient of Oasis for Girls’ Spark Award for Visionary Leadership, the National Council on Jewish Women’s Outstanding Advocate for Social Change Award, the Delilah Beasley Award, Love Never Fail’s Advocacy for At-Risk Girls Award and the National Girls Initiative Innovation Award. She has also received honors in recognition of her leadership from the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women and Equal Rights Advocates. Her work has been featured on CBS Channel 4 News, ABC 7 News, KCBS, the Oakland Post, NPR’s All Things Considered and Telemundo.

Advocacy Manager

Haleema Bharoocha

Haleema Bharoocha joined Alliance for Girls’ staff in June 2019, as the Advocacy Manager to build out a girl’s policy agenda and mobilize alliance members for gender justice. She leads county and state level advocacy to meet the expressed needs of girls and gender expansive youth. Most recently, she led advocacy with AFG members to secure funding to address period poverty, support the needs of young moms, and address safety from gender-based violence on public transportation.

Haleema is a sociologist, public servant, and change maker driven by her commitment to the collective liberation of all people. Uplifted by generations of women of color in her family, Haleema centers her work in compassion, justice, and service. Following the teachings of the Quran which says “stand firm in justice even against yourself and your parents,” Haleema speaks truth to power in her advocacy and engages in critical self-reflection.

She believes in the power of people to make systematic change. Outside of Alliance for Girls, Haleema is a consultant and trainer, facilitating equity-focused workshops for advocates on topics including bystander intervention, Islamophobia, racial equity, and gender justice and has trained over 700 people. Haleema is also a self-defense trainer and facilitator at Malikah, a nonprofit that builds safety and power for all women.

Haleema studied Sociology at Seattle University, where she founded the Gender Justice Center, a student-led community center serving gender non-conforming, trans*, and female-identifying students, which provided trauma-informed healing circles, access to lactation facilities, non-binary sex education, and a free community food and hygiene pantry. She is an alumnus of the Women’s Policy Institute, Greenlining Institute, and Rockwood Leadership program. Her work was featured in the Seattle Times #UsToo highlighting the voices of Muslim women of color. Her views have been shared in Teen Vogue, San Francisco Chronicle, and Gizmodo, and other media outlets.

Outside of organizing and social justice work, you can find Haleema at her local CrossFit gym where she does weightlifting or at the beach drinking coffee.

Director of Membership Services

Kailin Chou

Kailin Chou joined Alliance for Girls’ staff in July 2014, providing broad support for leaders of girl-serving organizations, managing membership engagement and outreach, developing Alliance for Girls’ communications, and coordinating services and resources among members and the community. Since joining, Alliance for Girls has become the largest alliance of girls’ organizations and champions working collectively to effect powerful change for girls, young women, and their communities.

Kailin has a strong passion for supporting children, youth, and marginalized communities. She has more than a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector, both in direct service and in management and administration. This includes mentoring children, supporting unhoused people at emergency shelters, developing the digital strategy for a large international NGO, consulting local nonprofits, and leading awareness campaigns on human trafficking.

Kailin has a Masters in Public Administration from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, with concentrations in Nonprofit Management and International Development. Her studies culminated in a consultancy for the Community Alliance for Safety and Peace, an alliance of over 30 stakeholders in Monterey County working together to reduce gang violence in Salinas and its surrounding areas. She also holds a B.S. in Management Science/Economics from the University of California, San Diego.

A Bay Area native, Kailin enjoys cooking, the outdoors, art and design, traveling, and learning languages.

Data Activist

Livier Gutiérrez

Livier Gutiérrez joined Alliance for Girls’ (AFG) staff in December 2017 as the director of programs. In this role, she provides research, development, and programming support and strategy to the organization. She oversees the organization’s youth participatory action research and evaluation efforts, including the research associated with the Meeting Girls Needs Initiative and the Young Women’s Initiative. She also works in partnership with member organizations and young women in implementing the Young Women’s Leadership Board, a non-profit board development program for young women of diverse backgrounds. Livier Gutiérrez has worked on the intersection of research, practice, and philanthropy as it pertains to preventing community violence for over a decade. Prior to joining AFG, she worked as a researcher at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, a research and policy organization, and as the director of the violence prevention department at Enlace Chicago, a community-based organization in Chicago’s Little Village community. Her violence prevention work has focused on undocumented and (im)migrant communities, justice-involved youth, and the intersection of violence that occurs at home and on the streets. Livier has a background in research, evaluation, and collective strategies, including leading and evaluating collective impact efforts and providing direct, mental health and restorative justice services at schools with youth and families in Chicago, Illinois and the San Francisco Bay Area. Ms. Gutiérrez earned her Master’s degree in social work from the University of Chicago, with a concentration in violence prevention research, policy, and practice. Her Master’s thesis explored girls’ involvement and association with gangs and resulted in a curriculum for girls at risk of becoming associated and involved with gangs. Ms. Gutiérrez also holds a B.A. in sociology and social welfare from the University of California, Berkeley. Ms. Gutiérrez’ professional mission is to support service providers and community members by better bridging research and practice to create systemic change for individuals in all points of the gender spectrum.

Program Manager

Nakia Dillard

Nakia Dillard joined Alliance for Girls in February 2019 as the Program Coordinator. Her role supports AFG’s systems-change work to build the capacity of girl-serving organizations and school systems to better meet the expressed needs of girls. She also serves as a liaison between representatives from the school districts, schools, community organizations, and middle- and high-school age girls throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Her role assists the ongoing research and implementation directly associated with the Meeting Girls Needs Initiative, the Young Women’s Initiative, and the Young Women’s Leadership Board.

Nakia brings over a decade of experience working to advance the health, leadership, and social and emotional wellbeing of young people in the Bay Area. Her professional background in youth development work includes the areas of public health, social justice, workforce development, literacy, personal development and self-care. She has worked in partnership with various community-based organizations, youth centers, schools, county departments and young people. Girls and young women’s self-empowerment has been at the core of Nakia’s values and work for many years.

Although Nakia is new to the Alliance for Girls team, she is not new to the organization. After starting her own girls’ empowerment program (Y-LEAP) a few years into her journey she was introduced to Alliance for Girls and soon became a member. She participated in former Women of Color Executive Director meetings, she attended and was a guest presenter during previous Alliance for Girls Annual Conferences, and has maintained a long-standing relationship with the organization.  

In 2012, Nakia earned a Bachelor of Science in Community-Based Health Education at San Francisco State University. She is the recipient of the OUSD Outstanding Service Award, 2009, and San Francisco State University’s Zoe Clayson Social Justice Award, 2012. She has served and continues to serve as a life coach and mentor to women and girls. Personally, Nakia enjoys spending time in nature, expressing her creativity through crafts/jewelry making, and practicing self-care.

Membership Fellow

Riss Myung

Riss Myung is a second generation Indonesian Korean American woman and a third year student at UC Berkeley studying Public Health, Global Poverty & Practice, and Food Systems with a Certificate in Asian American Community Health. She is passionate about community health, health prevention education, and uplifting the youth. Outside of Alliance for Girls, she serves as a Youth Consultant at Banteay Srei (program of) Asian Health Services, a Research Coordinator for Asian American Health Research Group (AAPIRHG), and a Teacher Assistant/Tutor for Upward. Additionally, she organizes with AF3IRM, a transnational feminist organization. In the meantime, Myung expresses her love and skill in creative writing, notably page poetry and spoken word. In her work, she provides intellectual social commentary and captures her Asian American experience. Myung hopes to integrate her passions in her work as an advocate, creator, and leader to create safe spaces for youth to engage in critical conversations.

Interim Deputy Director

Ronni Goldfarb

Advocacy Fellow

Samantha Paredes

Samantha Paredes-Cruz is an advocacy fellow at Alliance for Girls where she plans and supports
advocacy related events.

Prior to joining Alliance for Girls, Samantha interned at various organizations dedicated to empowering marginalized communities. Samantha was an application screener for Centro Legal de la Raza, where she screened 220 applicants for COVID financial assistance. During the summer of 2019, Samatha interned at Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE) where she wrote advocacy letters to the California Senate and Assembly. She also assisted the policy team research economic and social implications for proposed legislation to determine whether HOPE should support those legislations.

Samantha is a recent graduate from Middlebury College, where she majored in Political Science and
minored in Sociology. While at Middlebury, Samantha co-led community engagement trips in Vermont and the Dominican Republic centered on food security and health outcomes. In April 2019, Samantha presented her research titled “Media Coverage of African Americans in the U.S” at the Middlebury Spring Symposium. She was also an active member of Alianza, Women of Color, and MiddMasti.