Betsy serves as President/CEO of the Fund for Nonviolence as part of her longstanding, multi-decades long commitment to work on behalf of its donor. This includes supporting the donor’s steadfast focus on redistribution of her wealth. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Betsy established the Fund for Nonviolence in 1997 as the primary vehicle for redistributing the donor’s lifetime excess income and now bequest assets.
Betsy spent six formative years as a board officer with Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation; all other board members had lost a family member to murder and/or execution and opposed the death penalty in all cases. In 2000, in response to a need for rapid response funding, she initiated the Death Penalty Mobilization Fund, an activist/funder collaborative structured to acknowledge funding power imbalances by requiring a minimum of 3 activists per funder for decision making purposes. Funding was for state-based organizations working on death penalty abolition and reform efforts. It was one of her many experiences in what is now generally referred to as participatory grantmaking.
Her activism began early in the form of questioning authority and got a strong boost as a nonviolence trainer and organizer with the Clamshell Alliance. Betsy and her partner have three adult children and two grandchildren, all of whom fortunately live in California.
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