About Us
Civity Co-Founders
Malka Kopell and Palma Strand co-founded Civity after a series of conversations about citizens, civic engagement, government, and public challenges that began informally almost a decade ago.
Malka Kopell
Malka is an independent consultant to philanthropy, nonprofits and governments. She brings to Civity over 30 years of experience with collaborative, cross-sector governance and civic engagement, and has worked on a variety of issues, including neighborhood revitalization, water and air quality, transportation, youth development, and public health.
Palma Strand
Palma comes to Civity with first-person civic engagement experiences from working as a parent to enhance equity and quality in the public schools in Arlington, Virginia. She now integrates those experiences into her role as a professor of law, where she focuses on regional resilience; addressing systemic inequities; and the connection between civic health and robust democracy.
Civity Advisory Council
Greg Baldwin, President, VolunteerMatch
John Esterle, Co-Executive Director, The Whitman Institute
Kip Harkness, Deputy City Manager, City of San Jose
Liz Joyner, Executive Director & Co-Founder, The Village Square
Beth Kanter, Author, The Networked Nonprofit & Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, Blogger, & Website Host,
Richard Lang, Chairman & CEO, Democrasoft, Inc.
Amy Lyman, Co-Founder, Great Place to Work Institute
Marc Ross Manashil, Co-Founder & Principal, 11plus Philanthropy
Martha McCoy, Executive Director, Everyday Democracy, & President, The Paul J. Aicher Foundation
Barbara Pivnicka, Honorary Consul, Slovak Republic, Executive Officer, San Francisco Consular Corps, & President and CEO, San Francisco Global Trade Council
Graham Richard, CEO, Advanced Energy Economy, & former Mayor of Fort Wayne, IN
Colin Rule, Founder and COO, Modria
Janet Shing, Senior Program Officer, Community Foundation for Monterey County
Dave Steer, Director of Advocacy, Mozilla Foundation
Lucy Valentine Wurtz, Development and Marketing Director, Village Enterprise
Civity Logo
We’d like to acknowledge and thank our branding and logo experts, Jennifer Haist of Owl Designs and Julie Robertson for their work on the Civity logo.
