Board
Heide Felton
Co-Founder, Contagious Compassion
Heide Felton is a co-founder of Contagious Compassion, a Seattle based non-profit that identifies qualified student candidates, enrolls them in a workshop to assist in developing and clarifying their own personal vision and teams them with seasoned advisors who will coach students along their path of community service. Ms. Felton is also the founder of the website GardenBasedEducation.org. Recognizing that all children have individual learning styles, Garden Based Education offers educators and parents hands-on tools to engage and inspire students. She was co-founder of the organic garden classroom at Islandwood and helped set up a garden classroom at the South Shore School in South Seattle.
Ms. Felton co-founded the Mary M. Gates Guild, which has raised millions of dollars for Children’s Hospital in Seattle. Additionally, she has helped numerous non-profit start-ups. Ms. Felton’s philanthropy is focused on child & youth education, mentoring and health. Prior to her work in philanthropy she worked in the computer industry first in Europe then Seattle. She is married and has two boys.
Adnan Mahmud
Co-Founder | Program Manager, Microsoft
Adnan Mahmud is the co-founder of Jolkona Foundation and serves as its CEO. He also has a day-time job – a full-time Program Manager at Microsoft Corporation. He holds a BS from Angelo State University and a MS degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern California.
Adnan's motivation for starting Jolkona Foundation comes from having grown up in Bangladesh and witnessing some of the worst conditions that humans are forced to live through. Although these conditions are very unfortunate, he sees opportunities for using technology to improve these conditions. As Executive Director, Adnan leads Jolkona Foundation to pursue these opportunities by collaborating with unique and effective partners around the world.
Barri Rind
Board Member, AJC
Barri Rind has been a community activist for the past 28 years. She served on several boards, among them, the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle where she was involved with fund raising for distressed Jews around the world and building a community center for poor immigrants from Third World Countries. Locally she also served as an Alexis de Tuckville society ambassador for United Way of King County and later worked there as a Loaned Executive Coordinator who coached Loaned executives the art of fund raising for the homeless and poor. In the past thirteen years she was personally affected and involved with building awareness about autism, leading changes in education in local school districts, giving speeches and raising funds for biomedical research. In 2000, she established the Seattle Walk event for NAAR (National Alliance for Autism Research - currently, Autism Speaks) where she raised $400,000 and attracted more than 3000 individuals for the first such public event in the West Coast. Barri also currently serves on the board of the AJC, a human rights organization.
Being born in Jerusalem, Israel she has witnessed the 1967 and the 1973 wars and their impact on the whole region. Her activities in the NW included conversations, speeches and debates with Palestinians and Jews alike. She has earned a BA in International Studies and a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Washington.
Justin Spelhaug
General Manager, Microsoft Worldwide Operations
Justin is currently the General Manager of the Operations Service Group and leads the company’s product launch and release operations globally. Prior to his role in Operations Justin was the Sr. Director of Business Development and Strategy in Microsoft’s Start-up Business Group were he helped to launch multiple start-ups focus on delivering low cost computing solutions to the emerging markets. Prior to the Start-up Business Group Justin lead Marketing & Operations for Asia Pacific based out of Singapore. In total he’s has been with Microsoft for over 14 years.
He kicked off his career in the United State Marine Corps where he led a combat logistics unit and he graduated from the University of Washington with honors. Justin is dedicated to finding ways to help businesses and entrepreneurs around the world do well while doing good.