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.
Elizabeth Dearborn Davis
Co-Founder, CEO
Originally from Tampa, Florida, Elizabeth graduated with honors from Vanderbilt University, where she majored in Political Science and Human & Organizational Development with a focus on international development. Before falling in love with Rwanda, Elizabeth 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. She was the president of STAND: Students Taking Action Now Darfur, and a co-founder of Fashion for A Cause. Elizabeth first came to Rwanda in 2006 as part of a delegation on post-conflict reconciliation and human rights advocacy. In 2007, she founded a nonprofit organization in the States to provide scholarships to street children in Rwanda, support an orphanage in Kigali, and organize reconciliation and conflict resolution conferences for genocide survivors and high school students. In 2008, Elizabeth was selected as a StartingBloc fellow. Elizabeth received the Woman of Peace award from the Womens Peace Power Foundation in October 2009.
Dave Hughes
Co-Founder
Born in Hong Kong, Dave has traveled extensively in Asia, Americas, Australia, Pacific Islands, Africa and Europe. He is currently the managing director of the Jade Water Group, a property company in Hong Kong and a professional member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. Dave moved to Rwanda in 2008 to work with Project Akilah and was instrumental in securing the site for the institute in Bugesera district. While living in Rwanda, Dave played for the Sharks Rugby Football Club, which comprised a diverse group of young Rwandans, many of whom lived on the streets of Kigali. He organized the first Rwandan inter-club rugby tournament in which he also played. Dave is bringing a Rwandan rugby team to Hong Kong in March 2010 to participate in a Tens Tournament. Learn more. Dave is a keen sportsman and was the youngest participant in the 2000 Round the World Classic Car Rally and more recently participated in the 2008 Panama to Alaska Classic car rally. Dave 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 Schmidt grew up in South Dakota where she studied French and Communications at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, spending her junior year at the University of Grenoble in France, later working for the American Institute of Foreign Studies. After graduating with honors from Augustana, she served two years in the Peace Corps in Benin, West Africa. Upon returning to the States, she completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Syracuse University. Since completing her graduate degree at Syracuse, she has taught in universities both in the States and abroad. She has also spent several years volunteering as a poetry professor in prisons and directing community service programs in the West Indies and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation for Visions Service Adventures.
In 2005, her first book about Africa, Last Moon Dancing, was published, and Augustana named her Outstanding Young Alumus. For the 2007-2008 year, the Fulbright program awarded her a fellowship to teach at the University of Lome, in Togo and conduct women’s empowerment workshops at high schools.
Joyce Businge
Operations Manager
Joyce Businge spent her primary and secondary years in Uganda after her family left Rwanda in the 1950s. She graduated from the National University of Rwanda in Butare After completing her Associate degree, Joyce taught Economics at Nyamata High School in Bugesera District. She then returned to University and completed a degree in Business Administration. During her final year at University, Joyce worked as a consultant to develop the business plan of Hotel Credo in Rwanda. After finishing her dissertation, Joyce began working for Sonrise School, a new primary school for genocide orphans in the north of Rwanda. Sonrise opened in 2001 and eventually expanded to include a Secondary School and became one of the top performing schools in Rwanda. Joyce served as the Business Manager for 8 years. Joyce moved to the Private Sector Federation in 2008 to serve as the Advocacy and Public Private Partnership Manager and was responsible for covering 8 districts. While in the PSF, she successfully completed a training on Skills and Rural Investment Facility.
Kelley Mulfinger
Development Associate
Growing up in Tampa, Kelley first ignited her passion for women’s empowerment through education while attending an all girls school, the Academy of the Holy Names. Beyond high school, Kelley studied art history and marketing at the University of Virginia. Her favorite activity was her internship at the UVa Museum of Art, which allowed her to serve as docent for elementary and middle school students. The experience turned her on to teaching, and upon graduation, Kelley joined Teach for America (TFA), serving for two years as a 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 during her summer break to work with the organization Support for International Change (SIC). She taught HIV/AIDS awareness in primary and secondary schools, and witnessed education’s power 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. In this role, she led a multi-national team to support 120 women in making crafts that help the women become economically independent. Now, Kelley is excited to join the Akilah team as Development Associate and use her abilities and enthusiasm to excite others about the power of education, especially through the Akilah the Institute for Women.
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.
Irene Kagoya
Instructor of Leadership & Ethics
Ms. Irene Kagoya is the Leadership & Ethics Program Coordinator at Akilah Institute for Women in Rwanda. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law from Makerere University Uganda and recently completed her bar course at the Law Development Centre in Uganda. Despite her educational background in law, Irene has continuously been involved in leadership programs for women since graduating from university in 2005.
From 2005 to 2007, Irene served as the Global Student Leadership Representative in Residence at Manhattanville College in New York. She was the Global Student Leadership Program Coordinator for Africa at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania from 2007 to 2008. She is passionate about women’s empowerment and is certainly proud to be part of the Akilah Vision.
Mary Powell
Lead Instructor
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. She has been in Rwanda since 2008, working with secondary students and local government officials at the Maranyundo School for Girls just up the road from Akilah’s campus in Bugesera. Mary spends her free time as a coordinator for Every Child Is My Child, a volunteer-based organization that provides secondary school scholarships to students in Rwanda and Burundi. Before coming to Rwanda, she taught low-income kids in South Boston and helped get elderly survivors of Hurricane Katrina back into their homes. In 2005, she spent the summer teaching Chinese at Concordia Chinese Language Village in Minnesota. Mary has also interned with A Second Chance, an Ethiopian adoption agency, and volunteered at All As One, a home for war orphans in Sierra Leone. Mary teaches intensive English and Public Speaking at the Akilah Institute.
Jonathan Kleiman
Instructor of Health & Nutrition; Media & Marketing Associate
Jon spent his youth in the suburbs of Boston, imagining a system of education where all students’ needs would be adequately fulfilled. He kept a log of these thoughts in a Word document titled “Features of Effective Teaching.” His sophomore year of college at Washington University in St. Louis, a friend suggested that he considering taking a course in education. He flatly refused at first but graduated two years later with a degree in educational studies.
Jon has been hooked on all things education since. He 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. Jon recently returned from eastern Ethiopia, where he conducted independent research on girls’ education. In 2009, Jon was selected as a StartingBloc fellow.