Heffernan
President, Foundation for Systemic Change

John Heffernan has over three decades of experience in nonprofit leadership roles on five continents. He is the president of the Foundation for Systemic Change. Previously, he served as executive director for Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights’ Speak Truth To Power (STTP); director of the Genocide Prevention Initiative at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he established the Genocide Prevention Task Force; senior investigator with Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), where he led three investigations to Darfur, Sudan and Afghanistan, where he discovered a mass grave; and was the chief of party for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Guyana. He was the founding executive director of the D.C.-based Coalition for International Justice.

Heffernan served as country representative for the former Yugoslavia for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and managed IRC’s refugee resettlement program in Khartoum, Sudan. He also served as the vice president of the Business Council for the United Nations in New York City. He was a Coro fellow in San Francisco and has a master’s from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and BA from UC Santa Barbara. He is also the board chair for Disability Rights International and board president of Educator's Institute for Human Rights.