Maria Amalia Souza is Founder/Senior Advisor of CASA Socio-Environmental Fund. Her career of 35+ years specialized in designing strategies that assure philanthropic resources reach the most excluded grassroots groups working on social and environmental justice issues in the Global South. She is part of Human Rights Funders Network Steering Committee and co-founder of the Brazil Philanthropy Network for Social Justice. Amalia has a degree in International Services/Development/Environmental Studies from World College West, and a fellowship in Systems Thinking from the Dana Meadows Sustainability Program. In 2016, Amalia was shortlisted for the Olga Alexeeva Memorial Prize on Innovative Philanthropy in the Global South. Amalia has mentored 7 new Global South national funds to be implemented in the last 4 years and also writes articles and blogs for specialized philanthropic publications as Alliance Magazine, WINGS Worldwide Initiative for Grantmakers Support, among others.