BOARD OF DIRECTORS
What we do
The Board of Directors are the gate-keeprs of Escalera’s mission and values. We share a strong commitment to building equality for the indigenous youth in Chiapas. We are driven by the recognition of indigenous people’ capabilities and dignity. As a board we invest our time, skills, networks and resources to serve Escalera’s purpose.
Our Board
Bryson Garbett
Founder, Executive Committee, Board Treasurer
Bryson is an alumnus of Harvard Business School, OPM 27, Executive Education, and is president and founder of Garbett Homes, which has built more than 3,500 homes and apartments in 25 communities in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Missouri, and Mexico over the past 30 years. As the principal founder and trustee of Escalera, Bryson has over twelve years of development experience in Mexico. Bryson sits on several boards, including Habitat for Humanity and is a former member of the Utah House of Representatives. He pioneered building affordable green homes in Utah, received a Green Business award in 2010.
Jan VanDenBerghe Garbett
Founder, Development Committee Chair
Jan leads several organizations for children and women that have both local and international reach. As founder and director of EPIK, she works to use collective impact to empower a deliberate digital generation of children. With Families United Toward Universal Respect (F.U.T.U.R.E.), she organized training for Iraqi women in Utah; Washington D.C.; and Sulaimaniya, Iraq to promote the cause of women and families in the war recovery efforts.
Myriam Hernandez
Board President, Executive Committee Chair
Myriam is a development practitioner with more than 10 years of experience working with rural and indigenous communities in Mexico. She has expertise in education from her collaboration as policy advisor with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and as development and policy director at Escalera, where she worked for more than 4 years. Since then, Chiapas has kept a special place in her life and heart.
Myriam is also actively engaged in activism for women and civic rights. She joined CIVICUS Monitor’s Advisory Board in 2018, and is now a Senior Fellow for the Atlantic Fellowship for Social and Economic Equity at the London School of Economics (LSE). Myriam holds a BA in International Relations and an MSc in Social Policy and Development from LSE. She is driven by her passion of building meaningful networks and projects to ignite social change.
Pilar García
Development Committee
Cody Larkin
Development Committee
Patricia Velasco
Programs Committee