Our Leadership

A public affairs professional with more than two decades of experience in designing political and nonprofit strategic communications campaigns, Brenda Bowser Soder is KIND’s Global Chief Communications Officer. Prior to joining KIND, Ms. Bowser Soder was the Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. In that role, she directed the EAC’s communications team and led the organization’s media relations, digital media, event planning, video production and design activities. Previously, Ms. Bowser Soder was Vice President of Communications at Human Rights First, where she directed the nonprofit’s robust communications department in work to establish the United States as a global leader in the protection of human rights. Among her campaigns were efforts to end torture, protect refugees, support human rights defenders, fight discrimination and end human trafficking. Earlier in her career, Bowser Soder was Director of Communications at Alliance for Justice, where she led the nonprofit’s communications work, including a successful national and state-level campaign to ensure justice for those harmed by dangerous pharmaceutical drugs. She served as a producer for the organization’s 2008 short documentary film on that topic, “Access Denied: The Fight for Corporate Accountability.” Before that role, Ms. Bowser Soder was Communications Director for the Washington, DC-based Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), where she authored a media training handbook and frequently delivered death penalty-related communications training to elected officials, law professors, attorneys, advocates, victims’ family members, and death row exonerees from across the nation. Ms. Bowser Soder formerly served as Senator Olympia J. Snowe’s (R-Maine) Deputy Press Secretary, held a public relations fellowship at The Widmeyer Baker Group (Now Widmeyer Communications) in Washington, DC, and spent time as a newspaper reporter in central Pennsylvania. She holds a B.A. from Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

Hannah Chotiner-Gardner is responsible for the design, articulation, and implementation of a comprehensive fundraising strategy that is catalyzing KIND’s global growth. Prior to joining KIND in April 2021, Chotiner-Gardner spent eight-and-a-half years managing the development department at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Under her leadership, PHR nearly doubled its annual revenue, launched the first fundraising campaign in the organization’s history, and more than tripled the number of annual donors. Chotiner-Gardner played a key role in increasing support from philanthropic institutions by more than 50 percent and helped PHR achieve new milestones in overall revenue. A key member of KIND’s senior leadership, Chotiner-Gardner provides data driven analysis and insights to guide the organization’s ambitious approach to sustaining long-term financial health. In addition to leading and managing KIND’s development department, Chotiner-Gardner contributes to the organization’s ability to build and strengthen its partnerships and programs. Chotiner-Gardner’s career in fundraising spans 15 years and includes leadership experience in the fields of social justice and global public health. Before joining PHR, she worked for five years with major donors at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, in support of an 800 million-dollar capital campaign. She has also held management positions at the Boston Rescue Mission and the American Friends Service Committee. Chotiner-Gardner also brings extensive global experience to KIND, having managed educational initiatives in Ecuador, Ghana, and Namibia. Chotiner-Gardner holds a BA in English from Mount Holyoke College.

Lisa serves as KIND’s Senior Vice President, Global Partnerships. Lisa was a co-editor and contributing author of Childhood, Migration, and Human Rights in Central and North America: Causes, Policies, Practices, and Challenges, a study on children affected by migration in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States, written in collaboration with organizations from each country and funded by the MacArthur Foundation. Previously, she was Managing Attorney at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS). Throughout her eight years at CGRS, Lisa worked to advance law and policy for immigrant women, children, and asylum seekers through impact litigation, national policy advocacy, and extensive training and mentoring of attorneys. Prior to CGRS, Lisa practiced child immigration and child welfare law at Legal Services for Children. She began her legal career as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center representing immigrant children before the Immigration Court and Board of Immigration Appeals. Lisa has trained and mentored attorneys across the country and has presented to federal judges, immigration judges, and asylum officers. She is a 2002 graduate of Berkeley Law, Order of the Coif, and a 1996 graduate of the University of Maryland, magna cum laude.

Originally from Ghana, Hayford Mensah is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). He has an MS in finance from Rochester Institute of Technology and an MBA from the University of Ghana. Hayford has worked in accounting and finance for several other global and U.S. organizations, including the International Baccalaureate Organization, American College of Cardiology and GBTA. Most recently he served as the Chief Financial Officer of HIAS, which works around the world to protect refugees who have been forced to flee their homelands. He had responsibility for broad oversight and protection of the assets of HIAS and its related domestic and foreign funding. He ensures excellence in world-wide operations to control all fiscal activities in numerous countries, while creating platforms that create opportunities to scale the organization. He serves as a board member of IPAS and Winter Growth, Inc. where he is the treasurer. Hayford lives in Silver Spring with his wife Margaret and 3 sons. He is an avid soccer and football fan.

Maria M. Odom is the Senior Vice President, Global Legal at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), where she leads a team of immigration legal experts advancing the representation of unaccompanied children in removal proceedings. In this role, Ms. Odom oversees the management of KIND’s 10 field offices, leading the development and implementation of legal services programming nationwide, including pro bono representation of over 5,000 unaccompanied migrant children per year as well as the provision of innovative legal trainings and technical assistance in immigration law and policy. Her department also delivers comprehensive social services programs to address the special needs of unaccompanied children. In the near past, Odom served as the DHS Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman in the administration of President Barack Obama. In that role, she worked with community leaders and immigration professionals across the country to improve the quality of citizenship and immigration services delivered to the public. As Ombudsman, she reported to and testified before the U.S. Congress regarding systemic issues in our country’s immigration system. Odom is a nationally recognized legal and policy expert with a wide range of immigration experience in the private, government, and charitable sectors. She previously led the country’s largest network of charitable legal immigration programs as Executive Director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC). For a decade, she practiced immigration law in the southeast, leading a successful private practice in the areas of deportation defense, humanitarian protections, as well as business and family-based immigration. Early in her career, Odom served at the U.S. Department of Justice as Assistant District Counsel for the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service and as a judicial law clerk at the Executive Office for Immigration Review. At DHS, Odom led the department’s human trafficking prevention, training, and public education efforts as Chair of the DHS Blue Campaign. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Freedom Network, which works in coalition with service providers and survivor leaders to advance a rights-based approach to address human trafficking in the United States. Odom is a graduate of The Florida State University College of Criminology and the Mercer University Walter F. George School of Law. She currently lives in New York City.

An international human rights lawyer and an expert on child migration in the United States, Jennifer Podkul is KIND’s Chief of Global Policy and Advocacy. In this role, she manages the organization’s advocacy work to advance laws, policies, and practices at the local, national, and global level to ensure immigrant children are protected throughout their journeys to safety. To that end, Jennifer and her team provide technical assistance to policy makers on matters involving protection for children on the move. As a subject matter expert on child migration, Jennifer regularly presents at conferences, briefings, professional trainings, and testifies before the United States Congress. She has written broadly on the topic in news articles, handbooks and reports including serving as co-author of “Forced from Home: The Lost Boys and Girls from Central America” and a contributing author to “Childhood, Migration, and Human Rights in Central and North America: Causes, Policies, Practices and Challenges.” Fresh out of law school in 2006, Jennifer was hired as an attorney at Ayuda in Washington, D.C., first as an Equal Justice Works Fellow and later as a KIND Fellow. In 2011, Jennifer began work at the Women’s Refugee Commission as a senior program officer where she researched issues facing vulnerable migrants seeking protection in the United States and advocated for their improved treatment. From 2015 – 2017, Jennifer served as adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center’s Human Rights Institute. Jennifer joined KIND in 2019. Earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies and Spanish from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, Jennifer then honed her Spanish-speaking skills as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras. Jennifer returned to school to earn a law degree from American University’s Washington College of Law where she was a Public Interest/Public Service Scholar.