Betsy Brill is showing up in her life as CEO and Director of the HandUp Congo Foundation, a non-profit founded with two friends who grew up in Congo. This organization is devoted to identifying and delivering tools, resources, and partnerships to enable Congolese villagers to rebuild their communities. Betsy has mastered multiple disciplines in journalism and communication — from daily photojournalism to business magazine writing and editing to publication design to marketing publications specialist. With her husband, photojournalist and professor Ken Kobré, she spent more than a year of travel and writing about microfinance approaches in Egypt, India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. Among other articles resulting from the year’s journey, her five-part series on the topic for the San Francisco Examiner was a Pulitzer nominee and a runner-up in the Pen West awards for non-fiction. “The world is filled with problems,” she acknowledges, “but solutions fascinate me. Sharing those solutions – taught by women in other developing countries – is the most rewarding thing I’ve done in my life.” Betsy lives in San Francisco but spends part of the year in a small village in France when she is not working in Congo. As you might expect, she’s particularly fond of the ethnic influences in my jewelry.

Portrait by Scott McDaniel