Team
Barbara Atukunda Operations Manager
Barbara began with Educate! in 2008 as a Mentor and the office administrator. During this experience, she takes pride in the fact that she has learned from the best team imaginable. She is now in charge of accounting and office management. She is glad to be part of a movement that transforms communities and empowers youth to better their lives and those around them.Barbara graduated from Kyambogo University with a B.A in Guidance and Counseling.
Maya Brook
Director of U.S. Operations & Communications
Maya helps spread the word about Educate! through media, social media, and community events. She also manages the U.S. interns, the U.S. fundraising and the Educate! Annual Report and mailings. Before joining Educate!, Maya worked as a journalist and then as a publicist. Feeling that something was missing from her career, Maya was excited when her father (U.S. Advisory Board Member, Jim Ellman) introduced her to Educate!. She immediately got involved- first as a volunteer- and then as an official part of the team. Educate! was the missing piece in her career. She now does what she loves AND empowers others.
Maya was born and raised in Boulder and graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in Journalism and Mass Communications. She resides in Denver where she also teaches yoga. She has traveled all over the world- including beautiful Uganda!
Boris Bulayev
Co-Founder and Executive Director
A 2007 alumni of Amherst College, Boris has been working with Eric Glustrom on Educate! since the beginning of his sophomore year of college in October 2004. During the summer of 2007, he spearheaded the development of Educate!’s new leadership program and made connections with countless individuals in the government, non-governmental organizations, and schools. After spending the first two years post-college working on Educate! in his free time, Boris jumped back into the organization full time in 2009. In his role as Executive Director, Boris works on fundraising, board development, strategy, monitoring & evaluation, finance and things related to people.
Boris was born in Latvia, and lived there until the age of 7, when he moved to San Francisco. He is currently based in New York, but also spends time in Uganda and San Francisco. Before coming back to Educate!, he worked at start-up incubator Loeb Enterprises.
Charlotte Iraguha Program Coordinator
Charlotte graduated from Kyambogo University with a B.A in Education. She started with Educate! in 2008 as a Mentor for the Kawempe cluster of schools. Currently, Charlotte empowers four Mentors working 11 schools. She is also in charge of media (stories, blog, profiles) and photography. She believes in youth empowerment as the only way to eradicate poverty in Uganda. Before joining Educate!, she worked as a high school teacher for two years and she is glad to be part of a movement that seeks to create change in Africa.
James Katumba Program Manager
James graduated from Makerere University with a B. A. in Education. He started with Educate! in 2008 as a Mentor for the Wakiso cluster of schools. James now empowers four Educate! Mentors working in 10 schools. He also helps lead the development of new programs for Educate! and conducts the Educate! Teacher Training and Mentor Induction. His mission in life is inspiring transformation, conserving nature and pursuing joy.
Solomon Kayiwa
Graduate Program Manager
Solomon, a social worker by profession, is a motivated and enthusiastic leader who is also a network weaver. After graduating from Makerere University he worked for Lutheran World Federation and the National Forum of People Living with HIV/AIDS Networks in Uganda. After joining Educate! in 2008, Solomon worked for two years as a Mentor with Educate!’s Hoima schools. Today, Solomon trains 400 Educate! graduates from across Uganda and neighboring countries. He provides training and mentorship and leads a supportive peer network and access to capital to help these young leaders and entrepreneurs turn their ideas for positive change into a reality!
Nathan Little
Operations Manager, Monitoring and Evaluation Team
Nathan Little leads Educate!’s efforts to improve our program and prove our impact through the strategic collection and analysis of data. His work at Educate! involves coordinating our participation in a rigorous impact evaluation with Innovations for Poverty Action and a team of researchers, as well as spearheading Educate!’s internal monitoring and evaluation systems.
A native of Cedarburg, WI, Nathan attended Yale University and majored in linguistics, specializing in theoretical syntax. Previously, Nathan worked as a New York City Urban Fellow with the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications and with Save the Children in El Salvador. He also personally recruited over 80% of the New Orleans charter school Success Preparatory Academy’s inaugural 228-student class. Nathan has traveled to nearly 30 countries across six continents, many of them as a member (and former business manager) of the Yale Spizzwinks(?).
Costence Mpirirwe Procurement Officer
Costence graduated from Makerere University in 2008 with a B.A in Psychology. She started with Educate! in 2008 as a Mentor in the Busiro cluster of schools. Now she is the Procurement Manager, equipping everyone in Educate! with materials to empower the Scholars. The most interesting part of her job is creating powerful relationships with service providers.
Hajara Sengoma
Research Assistant
Hajara Sengoma was born in Kisoro Uganda but spent most of her early teenage life between Fort Portal and Kampala. She joined Educate! in October 2012 and was trained as a Mentor. After training, she was placed in the Research/ Development and Monitoring and Evaluation team. Her first objective is to build economic, social, professional linkages that will help Educate! and Scholars expand their projects. Her second objective is to ensure that all the information from the field is turned into data that can be based on to take future decisions.
Before joining Educate! Sengoma was an administrative volunteer with Uganda Adult Education Network where she coordinated all the activities of more than 125 member organizations. She is passionate about transforming lives by meeting goals and business. Sengoma has a BCHM in Catering and Hotel Management from Makerere University Business School, and a DPAM Diploma in Public Administration and Management of Uganda Management Institute.
Maggie Sheahan Program Director
Maggie Sheahan is the Program Director for Educate!, and has been working in Uganda since 2009. She is inspired most by Educate!’s proactive approach: “We all know about the problems that challenge our world, most especially Africa. I love Educate! because it empowers young people to think about solutions!” After graduating from Pomona College in 2008 with a degree in Religious Studies, she lived in Denver, Colorado working with homeless youth. There, she discovered the vibrancy and hopefulness that shines from youth.
Her work for Educate! has included writing Transform Uganda, a handbook for our scholars to become Changemakers, launching the Change Makers Association, and providing continued teaching support for our Mentors. She is currently facilitating the Educate! Teacher Training Course as well as implementing the Educate! program.
Rachel Steinacher
Evaluation Officer, Monitoring and Evaluation Team
Born and raised in the backwoods of Canada, Rachel joined Educate in early 2012 with the purpose of evaluating how our programs operate. Prior to joining Educate, she spent the better part of 2011 living in a slum in Kigali, Rwanda and worked with young genocide survivors at Generation Rwanda. This experience was life changing and fueled her passion for working with socially vulnerable youth. Following this, she endeavors to promote the reform of interventions targeting these youth thorough rigorous impact evaluations and the use of high quality evidence to inform program design.
Angelica Towne
Co-founder and Country Director
Angelica, who graduated from Middlebury College, brings a creativity and passion to Educate! that is expressed in the curriculum she has designed for the socially responsible leadership course. Her experience designing curricula in Jamaica and the US gave her a foundation. Now, by synthesizing resources and advice from our partner organizations and contacts in Uganda and elsewhere Angelica has put together an innovative, trend setting course that changes the face, and enhances the purpose, of the Ugandan education system. As Country Director, she enjoys leading the staff and Mentors in Uganda.
In her words: “I know firsthand what it means to be literally saved by nonprofit organizations that embody creative solutions to society’s opportunity gaps. At Kyangwali Refugee Camp, Benson Wereje, Bahati and I swapped stories of how we all received “sponsorship” or scholarships to attend university and how it changed our lives forever. I felt such a beautiful solidarity with our students and reaffirmation of the necessity of this work.”
Angelica@experienceeducate.org
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Educate!’s Mentors
Proscovia Ahumuza
Phiona Nakyaze
Susan Tusabe
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Interns and Volunteers - US
Ashley Kulik - Development
Christine Pack - Development
Linda Schutter - Event Planner
Andy Segoshi - Graphics Guru
Max Sheahan - Development
Shelby Sullivan - Development
Laura Uhls - Event Planner
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In-Kind Donations
Debby Farrington - Management training in Uganda
Janelle Farris - Organizational Development consulting
Jim Smith - Management training in Uganda
Karti Subramanian and Vera Solutions - Monitoring and Evaluation system support
…Not to mention, many volunteers, student club leaders, and student club members across the world without whom everything Educate! has done would not be possible.