The Team
The Akilah Institute is truly a global effort, with team members in places such as Florida, Seattle, New York, London, Washington D.C., and Hong Kong. A Board of Directors governs our 501c3 nonprofit organization in the United States. Our core leadership is supported by advisers from leading corporations and non-profit organizations. A committed team of volunteers helps organize events and spread the word about the Akilah mission. The Washington D.C. chapter of Architecture for Humanity and Pannotia steer our creative design and renovation work.
Akilah would not be possible without the countless individuals and organizations who have provided critical support and encouragement along the way.
Contact Us
Info@AkilahInstitute.org
BP 6396
Kigali, Rwanda
(250) 785-525-881
Akilah is located in the Kibagabaga neighborhood of Kigali, next to the Hospital.
U.S. Mailing address:
109 North Brush Street, Suite 300
Tampa, Florida 33602
813 925 1532
Elizabeth Dearborn Davis - Co-Founder, CEO
Elizabeth moved to Rwanda a few days after graduating from Vanderbilt University. She joined a Global Youth Connect delegation to study post-conflict reconciliation and human rights advocacy. She stayed in Rwanda to volunteer with grassroots education projects and in 2007 she founded a nonprofit organization to provide scholarships to street children and to support an orphanage in Kigali. The idea for Akilah first developed in 2008.
Elizabeth has worked on education and community development projects in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, and South Africa. Elizabeth was a founding member of Students for Kenya, an organization supporting the Lwala Health Clinic in Western Kenya. At Vanderbilt, she was the president of STAND, the student-led division of the Genocide Intervention Network and a co-founder of Fashion for A Cause. In 2008, she was selected as a StartingBloc Fellow. Elizabeth received the Woman of Peace award from the Women’s Peace Power Foundation in October 2009. She was selected as a speaker at TEDx Tampa Bay in February 2010.
Dave Hughes - Co-Founder
A Hong Kong native, Dave moved to Rwanda in 2008 to volunteer with a grassroots organization that runs sports teams for street children. After meeting Elizabeth, they decided to form Akilah. He returned to Hong Kong in 2009 to focus on fundraising and to run the Jade Water Group, a property company. Dave also played for the Sharks Rugby Football Club, which comprises a diverse group of young Rwandans, many of whom live on the streets of Kigali. Dave organized the March 2010 Hong Kong Rugby tour for the Rwandan team to play in the Kowloon 10s Tournament. (www.RwandaRugby.org) Dave is a professional member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, and is a graduate of Reading University Berkshire UK where he received a first class honors degree in investment and finance in property.
Monique Schmidt - Program Director
Monique has taught at universities in West Africa and the United States. She served two years in the Peace Corps in Benin, West Africa before receiving a Fulbright Fellowship to teach at the University of Lome in Togo and to conduct women’s empowerment workshops in local high schools. Upon returning to the States, she completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Syracuse University.
Monique grew up in South Dakota and studied French and Communications at Augustana College in Sioux Falls. She lived in France to study at the University of Grenoble and work for the American Institute of Foreign Studies. She has also spent several years volunteering as a poetry professor in prisons and directing community service programs with Visions Service Adventures in the West Indies and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. In 2005, her first book about Africa, Last Moon Dancing, was published, and Augustana named her Outstanding Young Alumus.
Joyce Businge - Operations Manager
Joyce spent 8 years as the Business Manager at Sonrise School, one of the top performing schools in Rwanda. Joyce moved to the Private Sector Federation in 2008 to serve as the Advocacy and Public Private Partnership Manager and was responsible for covering 7 districts.
A graduate of the National University of Rwanda, Joyce spent her primary and secondary years in Uganda after her family left Rwanda in the 1950s. After university, Joyce taught Economics at Nyamata High School in Bugesera District.
Kelley Mulfinger - Development Associate
Kelley served two years as a Teach For America first grade teacher at an inner city school in Atlanta. Teaching in Africa, however, changed Kelley’s life. As a TFA corps member, Kelley traveled to Tanzania for 8 weeks with Support for International Change (SIC). She taught HIV/AIDS awareness in primary and secondary schools, and witnessed the power of education to create real, positive change. Upon completion of her Teach For America commitment, she moved to Kampala, Uganda to serve as the Project Director for the Akola Project, an initiative to train women in handicraft development and to assist them in developing economic independence. Kelley studied art history and marketing at the University of Virginia.
Mary Powell - Lead Instructor
Mary has been teaching in Rwanda since 2008, working with secondary students and local government officials at the Maranyundo School for Girls. Before coming to Rwanda, she taught low-income youth in South Boston and helped find housing for elderly survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Mary has also taught Chinese at Concordia Chinese Language Village in Minnesota, and volunteered at All As One, a home for war orphans in Sierra Leone. Mary grew up in Iowa and managed to escape the prairie after high school to study in Nanjing, China, before landing once more in the Iowa cornfields to pursue a B.A. in History and Linguistics from Grinnell College. Mary teaches intensive English, Public Speaking, and Introduction to Hospitality. Watch Mary speak about her class.
Irene Kagoya - Instructor of Leadership & Ethics
Irene has been involved in leadership programs for women since graduating from university in 2005. Irene served as the Global Student Leadership Representative in Residence at Manhattanville College in New York City for 2 years. She moved to Tanzania to serve as the GSL Program Coordinator at the University of Dar es Salaam. Irene holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law from Makerere University Uganda and recently completed her bar course at the Law Development Centre in Uganda.
Jonathan Kleiman - Instructor of Health & Nutrition; Media & Marketing Associate
Jon has been involved with the Learning Enterprises organization for several years, working as both an English teacher in Hungary and Slovakia and as the program director for the Croatia/Romania program. He has also worked at an independent school in Massachusetts, dividing his attention between the technology and development department. In 2009, Jon conducted independent research on girls’ education in Eastern Ethiopia. Jon was selected as a 2009 StartingBloc fellow. Jon graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in Educational Studies. Watch Jon speak about his class.
Muhire Enock - Program Assistant
Muhire was born and raised in Uganda after his family fled Rwanda due to ethnic violence in the 1950s. He returned to Rwanda at the age of thirteen and completed secondary school at Nyamata High School in Bugesera district. Due to his proficiency with languages, Muhire began working as a translator for international organizations at a young age. Over the last several years, Muhire has worked as a consultant and research assistant for organizations including Never Again Rwanda, Global Youth Connect, Plan Rwanda, and Voices of Rwanda. He has worked with research teams from George Washington University and Columbia University to gather information about post-conflict reconciliation and the reintegration of former combatants. Muhire was a program assistant in the development of two documentaries produced by crews from the United States and Japan about the impact of the genocide on economic development in Rwanda and illiteracy in rural communities. Muhire is currently a part-time student at the School of Finance and Banking. Muhire speaks fluent Kinyarwanda, English, French, Luganda, Kinyakole, Lukiga, Kirundi, and Kihaya. Learn why Muhire joined the Akilah team.
Nina Meghji - Summer English Tutor
Nina was born in south London to a Ugandan-Asian father and an English mother. In 2004 she graduated with a BA joint honours degree in Drama and Philosophy from the University of Kent. She has more than three years experience of working in secondary schools in London supporting young people with English as an additional language, special educational needs and behavioural difficulties.
In 2008 Nina travelled to Sierra Leone to volunteer as a project officer with a local NGO. There she coordinated a community education scheme and set up a literacy programme for a group of homeless youths. Subsequently she volunteered for the Refugee Council in London, working with the access and advice team and the children’s panel. In 2009 she qualified as an English language teacher.
Nina has travelled to a wide range of countries including Cuba, Tanzania, Kenya, Bosnia, Kosovo and Mexico. She has also visited The Hague in Holland to observe the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Jenna Frydman - Summer English Tutor
Jenna fell in love with both Africa and teaching as a WorldTeach volunteer in Namibia. After a life-changing summer spent teaching English to secondary students and training teachers in ICT, she road-tripped through Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, and returned to Africa just a year later on a study trip to Burkina Faso. Having explored Southern and West Africa, Jenna is thrilled to now be able to experience the beauty of East Africa while interning at Akilah.
She brings with her a variety of teaching and tutoring experiences and is especially passionate about teaching ESL. In addition to teaching English in Namibia, Jenna has also taught ESL in Israel at a summer camp for children and in Chicago to refugees at the Ethiopian Community Association of Chicago and immigrants at the Albany Park Community Center.
Jenna graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in Psychology and International Studies and will return in Fall 2010 to pursue a Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language.
Marissa McCoy - Summer English Tutor
Marissa served two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Jamaica where she taught literacy and HIV education at a rural, underprivileged high school. Before joining the Peace Corps, Marissa worked with at-risk youth as a mentor/advocate in Fort Worth, TX.
She grew up in the Texas panhandle and studied social work at Texas Christian University. Marissa became interested in girls’ education at New York University where she is currently pursuing a Masters in International Education.
Shai Rasmussen – Program Development Associate
Shai has been dreaming about opening a school for women since she was ten years old. She has spent the majority of her life trying to figure out how to do it. When she was 18 she and a friend signed a notebook paper contract that they would dedicate the rest of their lives to women’s education. Her dreams of empowering the world’s women lead her to study karate in Japan, religion in France, photography in England, and education in Nashville. Along the way, life included a BA in Communications & International Political Science from the University of Central Oklahoma, a certificate from the Authentic Leadership Institute (where she learned to walk on fire), and several years in corporate America training in Leadership Development and Personal Power.
Shai joins Akilah from Vanderbilt University where she is pursuing her Masters of Education in Higher Education Administration and International Education Policy Management.
Caitlyn Guthrie – Development Intern
Caitlyn is currently a junior at the University of Tampa where she is working towards a double major in government and world affairs and english. As a student, Caitlyn is involved in the President’s Leadership Fellows Program and STAND, a student-led anti genocide coalition. In addition to her double major, Caitlyn is also pursuing her TESOL certification. She looks forward to the possibility of teaching and traveling when she graduates. In May 2010, Caitlyn traveled to Ghana, West Africa where she spent three weeks touring the country and working on small development projects in the rural Upper East region. Her passion for women’s studies and development led her to the Akilah Institute and she is thrilled to be our Summer Development Intern at our new office in Tampa.