DIRECTORS

Communities Rising is governed by a volunteer, unpaid, board of directors. 

Elizabeth K. McCoy, President/CEO

Betsy founded Communities Rising in 2009 and now works full-time for CR. She lives in India for about six months each year. Betsy has been working on educational programs in south India for 19 years.

Betsy practiced law in Pennsylvania for 30 years. She worked as a litigator in both private practice and for the government.

Betsy has also been actively involved in community and school service in the U.S. Her six children all volunteer with CR. 

Elizabeth Blong, Treasurer

Liz works for Amynta Group as their Senior Vice President of Finance in New York City. She is a 2007 graduate of Villanova University where she earned a dual degree in Accounting and Finance.

Liz has a substantial amount of experience traveling and working in developing countries, including volunteering for three months with CR’s Service Adventours program in India.

andy mccoy

Andy started his experience in India during high school by filming “Tsunami Smiles,” a documentary about the relief efforts following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Shortly after producing the film, Andy started working with Communities Rising.

He led classes with Communities Rising students in Computer Literacy and connected American college and high school students to CR’s volunteer program program. He is responsible for digital marketing for Communities Rising.

Andy is a 2011 graduate of the Savannah College of Art and design where he studied Art History. He is currently a senior software engineer at Stitch Fix in San Francisco, California.

Matt McCoy, Secretary

Matt has been actively involved in the development of Communities Rising since 2007. He lived in India intermittently for three years, building CR’s programs and staffing. During the same time, he taught spoken English for 1600 middle school students at the Petit Seminaire in Puducherry, India.

Matt currently works for Google Cloud in NYC, and before that for Columbia University. He has an MBA from Columbia Business School, and a BA from American University.

Kelly reilly

Kelly got her start with Communities Rising in 2011 as an undergraduate. She has traveled to India four times in support of three CR summer camps and a three-month internship.

After returning from her internship, she joined Accenture Federal Services in April 2015 where she worked with multilateral, nonprofit, and security clients. Kelly now works as a Project Management Consultant with The Well in Los Angeles, California.

jacob wenger

Jacob first visited India in the winter of 2008 to help run a soccer camp for over 250 children. Jacob has remained active with CR for the past decade, making a return trip in 2017 to teach a computer programming course for students, and help kick start CR's Literacy Project.

Jacob is a software developer and entrepreneur who previously worked at Google, Firebase, and Microsoft. He lives in San Francisco, where he works for a start up software company. He is a 2012 graduate of Notre Dame's Computer Science department. 

kathy yorkievitz

Kathy fell in love with Communities Rising in 2015 when she volunteered for six weeks to help coach the teams that went to the First Lego League robotics competition. She also taught in CR’s after school programs. Since then, she has been working on grant writing and program development for CR.

Kathy is a social worker who has spent the past 30 years working to improve access to income, health care, child care and education and training for individuals and families living below the poverty level in Pennsylvania.

She has worked as a policy analyst, advocate, program developer and program administrator. As the Deputy Secretary for Income Maintenance in the Department of Public Welfare under Governor Rendell, she was responsible for administration of the TANF, Medicaid, Child Support, Employment and Training and Food Stamps program as well as for supervising the 107 county assistance offices. She also served as a senior advisor in the Governor’s Office of Health Care Reform.

More recently, Kathy worked as the director of program development for a community health center while completing a Master of Public Health degree at Johns Hopkins University.  She also worked as an adjunct professor of Social Work at Millersville University.