OUR TEAMS
SASA is run by a team of dedicated volunteers, who all believe in SASA's mission
Executive Staff
Founder & Director
David Danzig
Cindy Srnka
Programming Director
Amie Kajzer
Executive Assistant
Sophia Wang
Programming Coordinator Assistant
Executive Team
This Team is the engine that keeps SASA running smoothly, handling SASA’s administration, recruiting, finances, legal matters, productivity software, internal processes, and more. Since SASA is a fast-growing start-up organization, the Executive Team innovates new processes, procedures, and tools to support the development of all the other Teams. Participating in the Executive Team is an excellent opportunity for anyone interested in exploring non-profit management and administration.
Team Lead
Martine Diepenbroek
Volunteers
Misato Fukui
Camilo Wu
Intern
Megan McNeil
Camilo Wu
Harini Ravishankar
Access Team
One of our primary methods for saving Ancient Studies is providing greater ease of access for students who want to begin studying the ancient world and developing their skills. We work to compile and present quality information to help students of any background make their way into Ancient Studies fields. We have published a database of free online resources in all Ancient Studies fields in August 2021, and we are currently compiling a list of colleges and universities that offer programs in Ancient Studies. The newest project of the Access Team is creating "how to" guides to demystify material that often goes untaught for beginners and college students.
Team Lead
John Haberstroh
Volunteers
Raquel Robbins
Muralikrishnan Mudliyar
Daniel Burnett
Carlotta Piantanida
Intern
Leilani Hoard
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Team Lead
Archaeogaming Team
We work with scholars to begin creating complete lesson plans, videos, and materials using video games with ancient-related content to explore themes and ideas of ancient history and society. These educational materials are distributed to a network of teachers for use in their classrooms. Preference will be given to individuals with prior experience in elementary and high school classroom settings and the development of script guidelines, editing of scripts, video editing and distribution.
Paige Brevick
Volunteers
Intern
Sophia Tucci
Emma Barbacini
Epameinondas Kazolis
Emily Harris-Taylor
Nuttanicha Phlongphan
Heather Yung
Amari Pavati
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Team Lead
Archaeogaming Live Team
Archaeogaming Live runs weekly Twitch streams where we play video games and talk about their ancient studies with relevant guest experts. We’ve played Stray Gods, Pentiment, Chants of Sennaar, and more, all available to watch on Twitch and YouTube.
Madigan Shepherd
Volunteer
Christine Tomlinson
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Team Lead
Creative Team
The creative team includes graphic designers, video editors, and website designers. These talented individuals work on a variety of projects for each of SASA’s 19 other teams. An intern with this team has the opportunity of engaging with many project types, gaining a wide array of experiences. This is a great opportunity for those with some creative background and interested in developing their skillset.
Martine Diepenbroek
Volunteers
Matthew Hamilton
Arqam Usman
Mercy-Grace Oluwole
Intern
Nick Larsen
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Fundraising Team
The Fundraising Team runs SASA’s annual fundraisers, the Birthday Bash in spring and the Halloween Bash in the fall, as well as smaller events throughout the year. The Fundraising Team is also responsible for putting our Annual Report together and for brainstorming future funding possibilities. Donations are the lifeblood of a nonprofit like SASA! The Fundraising Team brought back the Bazaar with new designs and implemented several giveaways that increased our fundraising opportunities. For the first time in SASA's history, we also set and met our fundraising goals for the Annual Conference and Halloween Bash.
Team Lead
Amie Kajzer
Volunteers
Annike Engstrom
Pat Skaskevich
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Team Lead
Grant Writing Team
Our Grant Writing Team works in tandem with Fundraising to bring in the funding for our projects. The team also works closely with our SASA Ambassadors to find new ways to reach out to organizations who want to work with us. We continue to secure several grants from organizations that have worked with us in the past. We continue to build existing partnerships and look to obtain grants from new sources.
David Danzig
Volunteers
Francesca Meneghetti
Daryl Bassin
John Breedlove
Oliver Zhou
Intern
Jocelyn Chen
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Team Leads
Inspire Team
The Inspire Campaign aims to utilize social media to spark a lifelong interest in Ancient Studies in teenagers and young adults. Interns would have the opportunity to work as part of a larger social media campaign, specifically focusing on content creation and historical research. Interns on the Inspire Team create content that interests them, as well as content that is relevant to the current social media zeitgeist.
Nicole Honold
Guy Brill
Volunteers
Clara Hayden
Laura Kelly
Intern
Jessica Kaur
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Team Lead
Live Events Team
We develop, plan, and run SASA’s live events, including Book Clubs, Master Classes, and our popular Winter and Summer Reading Groups. We also run annual fundraising events like the SASA Birthday Bash and Halloween Bash. Members participate in the entire event creation and production cycle, from soliciting new presenters to organizing events, assisting in live event production, to post-event communications, video editing, and management.
Parthika Sharma
Volunteer
MJ Pankey
Intern
Lance Cathey
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Major Donors Team
The Major Donor Team is responsible for building relationships with individuals and foundations that support SASA's mission, developing fundraising initiatives, and creating outreach materials to sustain and expand the organization's programs. The team conducts prospect research, communicates with prospective donors, produces donor newsletters and promotional materials, collaborates with the grant team to identify funding opportunities, and coordinates the SASA Ambassadors, a network of distinguished scholars who advise the team, represent SASA at academic conferences, and help strengthen connections within the ancient studies community.
Team Lead
Lauren Burchinal
Volunteers
David Danzig
Yesenia Bracamontes
Katrina Fulton
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Mass Communications Team
The Inter-Organizational Communications Team provides all our mass mailings, our newsletter, and our blogs. Our Inter-Org team has started our brand new research blog, Issues in Ancient Studies, to showcase the work our Research Team is doing. We’ve also started sending out our newsletter, the Oracle, twice a month to keep up with the increasing output of our growing organization. We’ve been working on initializing a journalism project, too, focusing on universities closing their ancient studies departments.
Team Lead
Kornelia Kasperkiewicz
Communications Specialist
Staren Henry
Interns
Zarah Wardhana-O'Reilly
Hilary Ewing-Mackie
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Team Lead
Outreach Team
This team forms relationships and partnerships with other organizations, individuals, and businesses to help further our mission and theirs. Interns will seek out potential partners, help draft language for our outreach, assist in planning strategy for effective outreach, and work to maintain and grow relationships.
Leon Corneille Cowell
Volunteers
Jack Sheehan
Kyle Taylor
Ioanna Zafeiropoulou
Interns
Ivette Juarez
Katherine Sales
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Recruitment Team
The Recruitment Team manages all of SASA’s personnel needs, writing and maintaining job advertisements, onboarding new volunteers, and running our thrice-annual internship cycle. In each of 2023 and 2024, the Recruitment Team successfully brought on over 100 interns and volunteers! We are expecting similar if not increased numbers for 2025! We have worked hard to streamline the recruiting process and practices that we follow by creating recruitment guides and informational sheets for internal use.
Team Lead
Edward Satkowski
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Research Team
The Research Team is the factual foundation of SASA’s mission. Our initial Downward Trend study proved that the rate of academic support for ancient studies was in sharp decline, and spurred our organization to set about building a better future for our past. Our Research Team members work on a variety of projects looking into the way that ancient studies intersect with the modern world, from the ways in which our understanding of the past is colored by those who founded academic disciplines to the ways AI is reshaping the landscape of learning. Right now, the team is engaged in recreating our initial Downward Trend work in order to take a look at how things have shifted in the past four years, as well as looking at other metrics that more directly show SASA’s impact on the landscape.
Team Lead
Jacob Lindbert
Volunteers
Shangri Mishra
Pallavi Mohanan
Interns
Lilian Padovano
Neo Hack
Abigail Byrne
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Social Media Team
The Communications Team plays an integral role in SASA’s messaging, look, and feel. The variety of social media content allows members of the team to exercise creativity and build skills transferable to a number of other workplace environments. Getting the word out about SASA is a great opportunity for networking and for furthering our shared goal of bringing ancient studies into the mainstream. The SASA Communications Team has been creating content on our social media channels to give the public an insight into all the exciting projects each of the Teams of SASA have been working hard on all year long.
Team Lead
Kathy Cuevas
Intern
Miro Meeks
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager
Virtual Conference Team
Interim
Team Lead
Technical Lead
Every year, SASA runs a public-facing, free virtual conference on ancient studies called Opening the Past. Our Virtual Conference Team is in charge of coordinating this grand undertaking, which involves not only arranging the speakers and technology, but also coordinating our messaging, working with video editors and field experts, and reaching out to scholars whose work is less visible to the academic circuit. The 2023 virtual conference was a huge success, with four keynote speakers and two days of panels discussing the science of antiquity and how ancient thinkers thought about progress and technology. We had over 17,000 views over the two-day event.
Cindy Srnka
David Danzig
Volunteers
Sophia Wang
Razan Aljallad
Susanna Vega
Interns
Lara Veraguas
Hannah Cummings
Sarah Ewida
Edward Satkowski
Recruitment Manager