Evie Hantzopoulos (she/her)
Evie joined Global Kids in 1996 as Director of Training and served as Deputy Director/Director of Programs for 12 years before her appointment as Executive Director in September 2010. Over the years, Evie has helped oversee the development, supervision, and expansion of GK's programs in New York City schools and has designed numerous special projects for youth and educators. She spearheaded the writing of Teen Action, a service-learning curriculum grounded in GK methodology, for New York City's Department of Youth and Community Development, which is being used at over 50 sites by other community-based organizations. Evie has also provided professional development training for youth workers and educators throughout the city and in other parts of the world, including Croatia and England.
For over 12 years, Evie has worked with a team of GK Leaders to develop and produce the annual Global Kids Youth Conference, which brings together over 600 youth and adults for a day of peer-led workshops and social action. Evie has a BS in Journalism from Boston University and an MA in Educational Theater from New York University. Evie was a Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellow and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to working at GK, she worked as Service Leader for ASPIRA of New York and a Master Actor/Teacher for the Creative Arts Team. In addition to her work at Global Kids, Evie is actively involved in community affairs and received the New York City Council's Pacesetter award for outstanding women. She speaks fluent Greek and is proficient in French.
NEW YORK, USA
Barton Chen (he/his)
Barton Chen is a junior at the Shanghai American School. He is from Hukou Township, Taiwan, about an hour away from Taipei. Although he considers himself a third culture kid, he has lived his entire life in the great city of Shanghai. Barton loves spending time on the baseball diamond and has loved the game of baseball from a young age. He is also highly invested in advocating or social issues such as LGBTQ+ equality. Currently, Barton is the Public Relations Officer within his school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance. In 2018, he was a speaker at TEDxShanghaiAmericanSchool. Combining his interest in social advocacy and passion for baseball, Barton is worked on a report that seeks to compare baseball’s impact on Taiwan’s indigenous communities in urban and rural settings.
This past winter, he had the privilege of interviewing baseball coaches and players from all levels in the process of working on the aforementioned report. As a queer person of color, justice and equality are values that will always be near and dear to his heart. Barton speaks three languages: English, Mandarin, and French.
SHANGHAI, CHINA
Jesse Bettinger (he/his)
Jesse Sterling Bettinger received his Ph.D in 2015 from the Claremont Graduate University with a dissertation tracing an event-logic through emergent models of physics intricately tied to process philosophy. Leveraging an adapted semiotic model, he proposes a “process” platform capable of realizing the age-old endeavor to frame a First Philosophy reuniting both physics and philosophy within the “being-qua-being” of experience. His doctoral coursework was predominantly pursued in neuroscience, and in the summers he teaches an advanced introductory neuroscience course with a full lab and research module at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth. His recent publications include topics in neural criticality; interoception & the neurovisceral axis;
and computational neuroecology.
Concurrent to his academic trajectory, Jesse played college/university soccer beginning in 1998 at LeMoyne College and the University of Southern Maine, and in grad school pursued a professional coaching career, with eight years as a college assistant between Pomona College’s mens’ soccer, and the women’s soccer program at Claremont McKenna College.
CALIFORNIA, USA
NEW YORK, USA
Robert Levitan (he/his)
Robert Levitan is an entrepreneur who has spent his entire career building businesses based upon new applications of technology.
Levitan has launched six companies, has had four successful exits and has raised more than $150 million in venture capital financing.
In 1995, Levitan co-founded iVillage, one of Silicon Alley's "first settlers" and a startup that would eventually become the web's largest community for women.
By early 1999, Levitan had left iVillage and launched Flooz.com, a digital currency company. A consumer could go to the company website to buy Flooz, which was e-mailed to someone in a digital greeting card; the recipient could then spend the Flooz at any participating ecommerce site, including J.Crew, Barnes & Noble and Tower Records.The company sold $3 million of Flooz currency in the first year and $25 million in 2000.
In 2004, Levitan built his third Manhattan-based technology business, as CEO of Pando Networks. The company specializes in hybrid peer-to-peer plus server-based cloud distribution of large files. Numerous game companies signed on for Pando Networks’ services, and, in 2011 alone, Pando software had delivered 200 million unique video games onto computer desktops.
In 2014, Levitan co-founded Live XYZ. The company built a live map of cities showing every business on every block, and what's happening inside each location by time of day.
Levitan and his two brothers, Richard Levitan and Dan Levitan, founded Prone2Help Inc. in April 2020. Prone2Help donates proning cushions to hospitals to assist in the treatment of patients with Covid-19 Pneumonia.