Government & Multilateral Funding

Caroline Kouassiaman is the Executive Director for Initiative Sankofa d’Afrique de l’Ouest. Caroline has 15+ years of diverse professional experiences in philanthropy, human rights activism, social justice and education to ISDAO. Previously Caroline was Senior Program Officer at the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), managing the sexual health and rights grants portfolio in West and East Africa. While at AJWS, Caroline was involved with ISDAO throughout the first four years of its journey, where she contributed to resource mobilization, communications and outreach to other funders and activists, and developing ISDAO’s programs, initially as a member of the Brain Trust and later of the Interim Governing Body. Prior to joining AJWS, Caroline was the Program Officer for Sub-Saharan Africa at the Global Fund for Women, where she coordinated grantmaking to over 100 women’s rights organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa annually, from 2011-2014. She serves as an advisor to the Queer African Youth Network.

Caroline is a queer Pan-African feminist of Ivorian and African-American heritage, and has lived in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Uganda. She holds a B.A. in Economics and Diplomacy & World Affairs from Occidental College, a Master of Public Administration degree and a master’s in international relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University (US). Caroline works for a world where LGBTQI persons – in their full and beautiful diversity – have the opportunity, autonomy and resources to live full, healthy and violence-free lives on their own terms.

Justus Eisfeld is the Strategy and Impact Lead for Hivos’ flagship program on LGBTIQ+ economic development. Before joining Hivos in 2019, he worked as a consultant at the corner of philanthropy, LGBTI rights and international development, including on the UN Development Programme’s LGBTI Inclusion Index, a scoping study on impact investing in LGBTI communities and co-authoring ‘Transformative Philanthropy’ with Ise Bosch and Claudia Bollwinkel. A trans man himself, he co-founded GATE, Transgender Europe and the Dutch Transgender Network. He holds an M.A. in political science/gender studies from the University of Amsterdam and the Free University of Berlin and is currently pursuing an MBA from Central European University.