Our Story

Staff

Sarah Stephens, Founder and Executive Director

Sarah is a is a veteran leader in bridging, organizational development, and the art of convening leaders for authentic, bipartisan conversations. Prior to launching CARE LAB, Sarah was the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for the Democracy in the Americas, which played a key role in bringing about the historic opening between the U.S. and Cuba in 2014. As part of her work to influence U.S. international policy, she led fact-finding missions to Cuba and other Latin American countries for more than 300 officials from both political parties (including more than 60 Members of Congress, business executives, philanthropists, artists, and other cultural figures). She became a go-to source for both Democrats and Republicans to receive balanced, nuanced information. Through her decades of foreign policy work, Sarah has honed her skills in trust-building, bipartisan work, and convening diverse groups of leaders and stakeholders. Her current focus on fragmentation, polarization, and trust-building derives from decades of human rights work including with Central American refugees and in providing public education against hate to large scale audiences.

Justine Williams, Co-Founder and Managing Director

Justine is an ethnographic researcher, nonprofit leader, writer, and anthropologist whose work across academic, non-profit, and advocacy organizations has focused on collaboration and coalition-building. Her current focus on bridging, trust, and bipartisan convening draws on academic expertise in the formation of shared identities and group dynamics. In her roles at university centers and non-profit think tanks, she has worked closely with grassroots communities, businesses, farmers, fishermen, and other stakeholders in projects of engaged research, advocacy, and policymaking. She spent two years conducting research with farmers in central Cuba, and for the three years prior to launching CARE LAB served as Managing Director of the Atlantic Fellows Platform for Innovation and Dialogue with Cuba. She holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. 

Jojo Vicencio, Senior Program Coordinator

Jojo joined CARE LAB’s founding team in 2021 after six years as an office administrator and support specialist at Oxfam America. She studied anthropology at American University, economics at the. University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, and international migration at Georgetown University. She previously worked internationally in Asia as an ESL teacher. Jojo wears many hats at CARE LAB ranging from events management, to operations and finance, outreach, and research support.