U.S. Advisory Board Members
Edwin Barber III: Ed Barber is Senior Advisor for African Development at GoodWorks International, and has given Educate! great advice on its future growth and development. At Goodworks, he is responsible for working on policy development and analysis, client representation (especially of government clients), business development, and financing issues.
Prior to joining GWI, Ed had a 43 year career with the United States Government. He spent 17 years in the Foreign Service at the U.S. Department of State, and 25 years at the U.S Department of Treasury, including 13 years as head of the Office of African Nations. In that position he was responsible for shaping U.S. economic and financial policies on issues such as debt relief, trade and investment, International Financial Institutions programs, technical assistance issues, and macroeconomic and development policy dialogue at the highest levels of government. He has also played a key role in extended visits to Africa by three successive United States Secretaries of the Treasury.
Craig Cramer: Craig Cramer has spent his nearly two decades long career at leading institutions investing in the private and social sectors.
From 1990-1999, Mr. Cramer was Senior Portfolio Manager at Canyon Capital Management, one of the largest hedge funds in the country. Mr. Cramer created and ran the firm’s asset class leading emerging markets portfolio investing in Latin America, East Europe, Russia, Central Asia and Africa.
In 2000, Mr. Cramer founded EMPower – The Emerging Markets Foundation. EMPower galvanizes the resources of Wall Street’s emerging markets community to support local social sector organizations in emerging market countries that have developed innovative solutions for expanding access to health care, education, and economic opportunity. Nearly a decade later, EMPower has made grants to organizations in over 40 countries and established itself as the primary philanthropic vehicle of the Wall Street emerging markets community, with broad individual and institutional support.
In 2005, Mr. Cramer was recruited to join the new Strategic Opportunities group at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Strategic Opportunities group launched the Global Development program, one of the three programmatic divisions of the Gates Foundation. Mr. Cramer subsequently directed the Special Initiatives group within Global Development, where he developed and launched major initiatives in the areas of urban poverty, quality education, governance and other emergent issues of importance to the Gates Foundation.
Since leaving the Gates Foundation, Mr. Cramer manages a global equity fund and has advised foundations on the placement of close to $2 billion in endowment assets.
Gretchen Dykstra: Ms. Dykstra is a consultant in strategic communications and program development in New York with extensive management experience in both nonprofits and government.
In the past year Dykstra has worked with Rosanne Haggerty and Common Ground Community to help shape and advance a unique approach to community development in Brownsville, Brooklyn; she has done projects for the Pratt Center for Community Development, The Center for an Urban Future and was senior consultant to the launch of the new Brooklyn Community Foundation.
Dykstra has held numerous positions for the City of New York including Commissioner of the Department of Consumer Affairs, the City’s leading consumer advocate, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. There she also staffed the Mayor’s Commission on Construction Opportunities and spearheaded the successful passage of the Lower Manhattan Coordinated Construction Act. Dykstra then became the founding President and CEO of the 9/11 Memorial Foundation.
Throughout the 1990s, Dykstra, as the first President of the Times Square Alliance, led the most dramatic urban reclamation project in NYC’s history. Representing the private property owners and businesses of Times Square, she was responsible for a range of supplemental city services and highly visible marketing activities and public policy initiatives. She and her staff successfully re-invented and promoted Times Square as a family destination. The New York Times called her work, “One of the greatest examples of urban reclamation in the world.”
Dykstra is a longtime Board member of Save the Children where she founded its HIV/AIDs Leadership Council; she advises an international philanthropy on women and girls issues in Africa, and has worked as a volunteer on income-generating projects for an AIDS orphanage in Uganda.
Jim Ellman: Jim, an attorney, has been giving generous pro-bono legal and other advice to Educate! since 2008. Jim is also responsible for introducing members of the Educate! staff to the joy of hiking and running on the beautiful Boulder mountain trails under the stars (allegedly including once in hurricane force winds).
Ash Hartwell: Ash Hartwell has thirty-five years of field experience working at community, national and international levels on educational policy analysis, planning, evaluation and research. He has provided technical assistance and training for the establishment and strengthening of national educational planning divisions in Egypt, Botswana, Lesotho and Uganda. He has provided leadership in establishing innovative designs for ‘grass roots’ basic education reform in Egypt, Ghana, Malawi and Afghanistan. He has also held regular and honorary teaching positions in several universities in Africa and the United States. He is currently an adjunct professor at the Center for International Education, University of Massachusetts, and a policy advisor for the Education Development Center and USAID’s Educational Quality Improvement Policy (EQUIP 2) project, focusing on the analysis of complementary basic education for underserved populations.
Over the past three years Ash has carried out an overview of education sector developments in Kosovo for UNICEF (Aug 2008); led an international team evaluating the fifteen year experience of Aga Khan University’s Institute for Education Development (Nov 2008); developed a framework for international collaboration in education reconstruction for ‘Fragile States’ for the World Bank’s FTI Secreatarat (March 2009); lead a team for an assessment of vulnerable youth in Kenya for USAID (Nov 2009); and served as an advisor for the design of national of early grade literacy (in mother tongue and English) in Ghana (current). He has also served as a senior advisor to the American University, Cairo on the design and start up a Graduate Education Program (for the middle East). From 1992 to 2000 Ash served as senior education advisor to USAID’s Africa Bureau, responsible for the design, oversight and evaluation of programs in twelve countries.
Living and working in Ethiopia, Uganda, Lesotho, Botswana and Egypt for extended periods, Ash has grown to believe in a deep, innate human love and capacity for learning (and playing), which is not inevitably deadened as youth fades into adulthood. He holds that every child - and potentially every adult – has capacity for genius (Awe, curiosity, joy, inventiveness, creativity…). His work seeks to support individual and community learning - which he believes to be the process of transformation that leads to greater capacity, and opportunity, to participate in society. Learning is connected to our personal meaning, and to our relationships to others. Ash has been involved in specific initiatives in Egypt, Ghana, Uganda, Malawi that apply learning principles to classroom, school, community programs, and he also works towards supporting and financing national policies that are built from local successes.
Sue Kunz: Sue is the CEO of BioVantage, responsible for corporate vision, strategy, execution and capitalization. Her prior experience spans numerous roles including CEO, Founder and corporate executive. BioVantage is Sue’s fourth startup. Her most recent company, Solidware Technologies, Inc., was acquired in 2008. Prior to founding Solidware, Kunz was a Director of Marketing and Business Development for Sun Microsystems, as well as serving stints as Six Sigma Deployment Director and Outbound Marketing Director. Before Sun, Kunz sold digital imaging solutions in Germany and held various marketing positions at IBM, also in Europe. Her international stretch started as Kunz helped set up the European offices for Boulder-based startup, Precision Visuals, Inc., where she began her career as a software developer.
Sue currently serves on Colorado Governor Bill Ritter’s Council for Innovation and serves on multiple boards and advisory boards including Boulder Environmental Sciences and Technology (BEST), Silicon Flatirons, Linerate Systems, Impact on Education, Educate! and Summit Charter Middle School, and she is a Techstars mentor Ms. Kunz is a recipient of the Tribute to Women in Industry Award from the YWCA, Santa Clara and a recipient of the 2009 Colorado Entrepreneur with Impact Award. Kunz graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Idaho.
Anthony Marx: Anthony Marx, the former president of Amherst College and current president of the New York Public Library, has long believed in the mission, programs, and people behind Educate!. He has encouraged Amherst students to participate in the Educate! internship each summer and worked with the Educate! student club at Amherst. When younger, President Marx helped start Khanya College, a path-breaking school in South Africa designed to serve as a bridge for black students from apartheid K-12 schools into the best universities. He brings a depth of experience to Educate!.
Before coming to Amherst in 2003, President Marx served for 13 years on the faculty at Columbia University, where he was professor and director of undergraduate studies of political science. He is author of three books on nation-building, and has concentrated on South Africa.
Matthew Murumba: Matthew is an actor based in New York where he is a member of some impressive companies including the resident company at the Flea Theater, a staple in downtown Manhattan, and Stage 13 (founded by Tony Award Winner Dan Fogler), a small collective of artists that recently had a project premiere at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival. Matthew has also had Co-Starring roles on shows like Law & Order and pilots for Comedy Central.
Prior to his career as a professional actor, Matthew spent a number of years as an Investment Banking Analyst at Goldman Sachs and is a graduate of Amherst College. In many ways he is the product of three contents, Australia where he was born, America where he grew up and now lives, and Uganda where both of his parents were born. He is very proud of the work Educate! is doing in a country that is very special to him. There is more info about Matthew at www.matthewmurumba.com.
Robert Nelson: Professor Robert Nelson has been working with the International Labour Organization (ILO) for over thirty years to train and educate young men and women in entrepreneurship in Africa, Asia and Arab States. Nelson is the principle author of the ILO’s “Know About Business” entrepreneurship curriculum which is used for educational institutions and youth training programs in more than forty countries worldwide. He has conducted more than thirty teacher-training workshops across the world since 2005, as well as taught at the University of Illinois from 1973 to 2001.
Nelson is currently Senior Scholar in Residence at the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and in 2009, he was commended with the Champaign-Urbana International Humanitarian Award. Professor Nelson’s work has been a basis for numerous international entrepreneurial programs. His commitment to business ethics and the power of entrepreneurship to achieve social progress has inspired many teachers and educators to include his program in their curriculum.
Eric Reynolds: Eric is focused on creating Inyenyeri, an innovative social enterprise that will lift the poorest of the poor in Rwanda out of poverty. Inyenyeri (meaning “light from above” in Kinyarwanda) uses the power of business and technology to improve quality of life and drive sustainable development. Eric was previously the creator and founder of Marmot, an established adventure clothing company and Nau, a new kind of company that strives to do no harm in the course of pursuing profit. He is also an inspiring mountaineer, adventurer, and a great mentor to the Educate! team.
John Rovegno: John Rovegno was one of the founding employees of Synapse Group, a direct marketing company that sold to Time Warner for a reported $700 million in 2001. John held various roles at the company, including CIO, and was key to the growth of the business. After Synapes, John worked at Loeb Enterprises. He provides valuable advice about various operational and management issues to Educate!’s team.
Scott Sherman: Scott Sherman is the Executive Director of Transformative Action Institute and has worked on nonviolence and social justice projects from the war-torn island of Sri Lanka to the inner city ghettoes of America. He is an expert on the most effective ways that citizens succeed in creating social progress and innovation.
Sherman’s work on nonviolent social change projects has been praised by such Nobel Peace Prize Laureates as the Dalai Lama and the late Mother Teresa. He is also a nationally recognized speaker on environmental regeneration and transformative action. He has won the outstanding teaching award from the University of California at Berkeley. In 2004, he was nominated for the National Society of Collegiate Scholars’ Faculty of the Year award for the entire U.S.
Sherman earned his undergraduate and law degrees from U.C. Berkeley, as well as his Ph.D. in environmental studies from the University of Michigan. Besides his work as a grassroots community organizer, lecturer, and author, Sherman has worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Law Foundation. He is currently an adjunct faculty member in UCLA’s School of Public Affairs.
Jim Smith: Jim is a Dallas based hedge fund manager who has provided valuable guidance to Educate! since 2005.
Peter Wirth: Peter is the head of Investment Banking at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. He has a strong passion for Africa and has supported initiatives there for a long time.
Derek Wittenberg: Derek is an experienced advisor to emerging technology companies. As Managing Director of Ion Partners LLC, a boutique investment bank based in Manhattan, Derek provides strategic and financial advice to entrepreneurs operating in dynamic markets. His 20-year investment banking career began at Lehman Brothers, where he worked with global clients such as PacTel and Verizon.