KAREN TOPAKIAN

Karen Topakian has been the Executive Director of the Agape Foundation - Fund for Nonviolent Social Change since 1993.  Karen has worked in the activist and advocacy wing of the non-profit sector for 30 years, including serving as a Nuclear Disarmament Campaigner for Greenpeace, as the first director of the University of Rhode Island's Women's Center and as a manager of a food co-op. Karen has served on the Greenpeace Fund board since 1994.  She served for 10 years on the Board of the Western States Legal Foundation and for four years on the Women's AIDS Network board.
 
Karen co-chaired San Francisco's Fundraising Day in 2003 and served on the event committee for National Philanthropy Day in San Francisco from 2002 to 2004. In 2006, she served on the Fundraising Committee and Organizing Committee for Raising Change, A Social Justice Fundraising Conference sponsored by the Grassroots Fundraising Journal. She frequently serves on panels of social justice grantmakers, nonprofit executive directors and board members. Karen is a 1976 graduate of Clark University and a 1987 graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute where she received a master's degree in filmmaking.