Meet Our Board
Helia’s Board of Directors provides strategic leadership and governance, strengthening our organisation and its impact.
Sybille is a sustainability professional with over fifteen years of experience bridging environmental stewardship and sustainable finance.
She has worked in international cooperation with the Geneva Water Hub at the University of Geneva and with the United Nations Development Programme in Peru on climate change adaptation. She also spent a decade in sustainable finance as Deputy Director of Sustainable Finance Geneva, with the Ethos Foundation on corporate sustainability engagement, and with the green investment funds at UBS Global Asset Management.
Sybille holds a master’s in International Studies and an Executive Certificate in SDG Investing from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, as well as a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University in Boston.
Treasurer
Sybille Chevalier-Gianadda
Madeline Rees
Madeleine is a British lawyer and former Secretary General of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
She previously held high level positions with the United Nations where she helped to expose sexual abuse and forced prostitution by UN peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Madeleine was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to human rights, particularly women's rights, and international peace and security.
Secretary
Sharon Bylenga
Sharon is an agricultural economist by training and a retired U.S. diplomat with extensive experience in international development, agricultural trade, and public service media.
She is the founder of Media Matters for Women, a global nonprofit she established and led for more than a decade which addresses the information needs of “last-mile” women and girls in rural Africa.
Previously, Sharon managed nationwide public-service radio projects in Liberia, Timor-Leste, and Sierra Leone for a Swiss nonprofit. She has served as a consultant to the World Bank, USAID, and the United Nations, with professional assignments in the West Bank and Gaza, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Turkey, North Macedonia, and Zambia, and earlier volunteered in Guinea-Bissau.
Her diplomatic career includes ten years with the U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service during which she held overseas and Washington-based assignments focused on agricultural trade policy, including five years as the U.S. Agricultural Attache to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.
Chair
Divya is the CEO of the SDK Foundation--an organization that works to redefine impact by leveraging venture philanthropy to catalyze sustainable innovation to enhance human dignity around the world.
She is also the Co-Founder and Chair of the Board of the Artistic Freedom Initiative, a non-profit organization, and its sister office in Geneva, Initiative pour la liberté artistique (ILA), that provides pro bono legal assistance and resettlement services to persecuted artists globally and leads policy reform and strategic litigation on the issue in domestic, regional, and multilateral fora.
Divya has nearly two decades of experience in U.S. foreign policy and national security, including serving as Director for Global Development and Human Rights at the National Security Council in the White House and Chief of State Department teams covering energy, climate, and international organisations. She has served as a Senior Representative on the U.S. Delegations to the United Nations in both Geneva at the Human Rights Council and in NY on the Security Council.
Board Member