Isabella Matambanadzo is the Zimbabwe Program Manager for the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and appointee to the Board of Trustees of Radio Voice of the People. She began her career in journalism at the SADC Press Trust, publishers of the Southern African Economist, a magazine specializing in economic development issues in SADC. She then worked as a reporter for the third world news agency, Inter Press Service in Harare, for Radio One at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, and for Reuters’ East Africa Bureau in Nairobi, Kenya. In 2002, Matambanadzo served as the Executive Director of the Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre and Network, one of the foremost women’s human rights organizations in Zimbabwe. Matambanadzo is also actively involved as Spokesperson of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, and as Secretary General of Transparency International’s Zimbabwe Chapter.

Deprose Muchena is the Economic Justice Program Manager at the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. Prior to this appointment he worked with USAID in the Zimbabwe Mission as Democracy and Governance Adviser. He is a highly respected human rights defender in Zimbabwe, having been among the founding members of the National Constitutional Assembly and continuing to serve on the boards of a variety of NGOs. Earlier in his career he was at the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, focusing on economic and social rights and the role of the church in promoting and protecting fundamental freedoms and civil liberties.

Dave Peterson is the Senior Director of the Africa Program of the National Endowment for Democracy, a privately incorporated, publicly funded grantmaking organization in Washington, DC. Since 1988, he has been responsible for NED’s program to identify and assist hundreds of African nongovernmental organizations and activists working for democracy, human rights, free press, justice and peace. He was formerly executive director of Project South Africa of the A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund, and a freelance journalist in Africa and Turkey. He has a BA from Columbia College and an MA from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York, as well as an MA in African Studies and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. He has visited more than 40 African countries since 1984, and has published numerous articles on African politics.