Who We Are
Kingsley Arkorful
Deputy Team Leader - EQUALL
Mr. Arkorful is a national of Ghana with over ten years experience as an Educationist, Community Development Specialist, Management Trainer and Facilitator, with management experience in both formal and non-formal education sectors. He is currently working as an Associate Director for Field Activities and Acting Chief of Party for the USAID-funded Community School Alliances (CSA) Project. As Associate Director, he is responsible for all CSA project planning and management within his regions of administration. Previously, Mr. Arkoful served as the Participatory Rural and Appraisal (PRA) and Training Specialist for CSA, during which period he developed cost-effective strategies for conducting PRA and School Management Committee/Parent Teacher Association (SMC/PTA) training, and designed and produced SMC, PTA, and PRA training protocols and tools. Mr. Arkoful has also acted as the Program Coordinator for the World Bank funded Schooling Improvement Fund, headed a private primary school, taught in a Teacher Training College and served as an examiner for the West African Examination Council. He has extensive experience in community mobilization/development work, participatory project planning and management, adult training, management training/capacity building, socio economic research, participatory research skills, participatory monitoring and evaluation and HIV/AIDS advocacy. He provides training in integrated community/social development, adult learning skills/techniques, project planning and management, facilitation/ communication skills, resource mobilization and people management.
Lisa Austin
International Program Assistant
Lisa received her Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University where she majored in psychology. While a student at Georgetown, she spent two years serving as an Americorps member working with at-risk children and youth in Washington, D.C. She coordinates the EQUIP3 / Youth Trust Youth Advisory Committee, supports the associate award in Haiti and assists with knowledge management and communications. Prior to joining the GLG team she was a program assistant at the AED Center for Youth Development and Policy Research.
Melanie Beauvy
Youth/Youth-at-Risk Specialist
Melanie is currently the USAID-funded EQUIP3 / Youth Trust Associate Project Director for Youth Involvement. Melanie has extensive experience in designing, implementing, facilitating and evaluating global youth development programs in a multicultural context, in both developing and developed countries. She has expertise in various aspects of youth programming, including youth participation; livelihood skills development and basic education strategies for out-of-school and at-risk youth; participatory youth assessment methodologies; youth leadership and entrepreneurship development; youth networks organizing; and youth mobilization. She is skilled in multi-sector approaches to development, including social innovation, microfinance and microenterprise development, governance and community participation, and experiential learning. Ms Beauvy has professional work experience in Bangladesh, Germany, France, Haiti, Senegal, South Africa, and the United States.
Brenda Bell
Adult Basic Education and Literacy Specialist
Brenda Bell is Senior Associate at the Center for Literacy Studies, University of Tennessee, and an independent adult education consultant. She has over 30 years of experience in formal and nonformal adult education. Most recently, she managed the classroom-based research, teacher training programs and materials development for Equipped for the Future, the National Institute for Literacy’s Educational Improvement Initiative. The author and editor of publications about adult education, in 2004 she delivered the 6th annual Horton-Freire Lecture in Patna, Bihar. Currently Ms. Bell is a Literacy Specialist to the Afghanistan Literacy and Community Empowerment Program.
Gerry Boardman
Education Specialist
has an extensive background in education, including experience as a teacher, principal and superintendent; higher education experience as a professor, chairperson, and director; and overseas experience as an educational development technical specialist and team leader. Mr. Boardman was also previously the ODC/Community School Alliance team leader in Ghana and was instrumental in the development of the CSA/MOE Handbook for SMC/PTAs for Improving Quality Education through Community Participation, development of a Community Mobilization Facilitator Manual, and development of a Best Practice approach to monitoring and evaluation.
Alejandra Bonifaz
International Program Coordinator
Alejandra works in EQUIP3, where she provides technical and programmatic support to the EFA Youth Challenge Grant Program, consisting of three education and youth development projects in Jamaica, South Africa, and Uganda. She coordinates a learning initiative among EFA projects and co-manages EQUIP3’s Youth Community of Practice. Similarly, she supports Education Quality for All (EQUALL), a project that aims to increase the quality and access of complementary education in Ghana. She also manages a project funded by the Japan Foundation, called Cross-Cultural Understanding Using Picture Books, which aims to teach Japanese elementary students about American culture. Previously, she worked on the Education for All (EFA) Movement at the World Bank, assisting the Bolivian government in their EFA-Fast Track country plan and providing guidance to other country governments (Haiti, Guyana, and Nicaragua). She designed evaluation instruments and helped disseminate a Life Skills Education program for UNICEF Malawi. Her professional experience includes Australia, Bolivia, Malawi, and the United States. She holds an Ed.M. in International Educational Development from Boston University, a B.A. in Elementary Education, and a B.A. in Economics.
Janice Brodman
Information and Communications Technology
Dr. Janice Brodman is Director of the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) at EDC. In this capacity, she is actively engaged in helping organizations in the U.S. and around the world expand successful use of information, education and training technologies to enhance organizational and professional development. She is the author of a number of seminal works on factors contributing to successful use of ICT and training technologies in developing countries. She has managed large, complex projects in Asia and Africa, which have been exceptionally successful. Her projects include development of global and regional electronic discussion lists that build NGO networks and support national and international communities of practice; development of multimedia training programs; and creation of WWW resources.
Nancy Devine
Community Schools and Community Development
Ms. Devine has 25 years of experience as a manager of private voluntary organizations in the U.S. and in West Africa as a director for the YMCA and World Education. She is currently serving as the Senior Program Planner for EDC, in which capacity she develops and manages new projects in the areas of basic education, community participation and civil society, and youth and HIV programs. Specifically she provides technical and strategic oversight to education programs in Mali, Ghana, and Malawi. Previously, as the Senior Advisor on civil society in education, and as West Africa Regional Director and Country Director in Mali for World Education, Ms. Devine was instrumental in expanding World Education’s portfolio of community participation in education in the Region.
Caroline Fawcett
Director - GWIT ANE Rapid Workforce Assessments
Caroline
has over 20 years of experience in designing and managing labor market and workforce systems policies and programs worldwide. Her work includes both domestic and international projects, primarily in the areas of workforce training, employment and labor market services, and trade integration and privatization. She has worked in 21 countries and has extensive experience in Latin America. Many of these projects involved the design of pilot projects and needs assessments, management of large and complex workforce training programs in various sectors, including youth and gender employment programs.
On a personal note, Dr. Fawcett lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with her husband and three children. She is a soccer mom, and specializes in carpools!
Ash Hartwell
Education Specialist
Ash has 30 years of field experience working at community, national and international levels on educational policy analysis, planning 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 basic education reform in Egypt, Ghana and Malawi. Dr. Hartwell has also held regular and honorary teaching positions in several universities in Africa and the United States. Currently, Ash is working as a key member of the USAID Project EQUIP2 on the worldwide analysis of education alternatives to meet the goals of Education for All.
Sarah Hay
International Program Coordinator
Sarah
experience with indigenous issues and education includes work as an editor and fundraiser with Cultural Survival, an NGO engaged in indigenous rights, and with the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Recently, Sarah developed a Nigerian microfinance organization that encourages greater literacy among women and girls and provides self-sustainability through micro lending. Sarah also served as chair of the Bridge Builders conference on International Grassroots Leadership at Harvard. Additionally, Sarah taught kindergarten for the Cambridge Public Schools, was an experiential educator with Outward Bound, VISIONS International Service Adventures, and National Outdoor Leadership School-Alaska, and was the Director of International and English programming at the CEDEI School in Ecuador. Sarah has worked or lived in Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Dominica, Nigeria, and South Africa, and holds a Masters in International Education Policy from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
Ronald Israel
Vice President – Director of the Global Learning Group
Mr. Israel is Vice President at Education Development Center, where he serves as Director of the Global Learning Group. During his tenure in this position, EDC has become a leader in the field of international formal and non-formal education and human capacity development. Mr. Israel has worked with groups of scholars and teachers from countries around the world, facilitating projects within a broad array of cultural settings. He has over twenty years of consulting and project management experience in the fields of education, health, the environment, and civil society programs. He has consulted for a variety of EDC clients including USAID, the United Nations Development Programme, UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO, and the World Bank.
Hisham Jabi
Chief of Party - RUWAAD Program
has thirteen years of experience in youth development, business development and information technology, as well as with micro enterprise and entrepreneurship development. Currently he is serving as the Chief of Party for Ruwwad Program in the West Bank Gaza. He also worked with EQUIP3 / Youth Trust as the Associate Project Director for Knowledge Management and Middle Eastern Affairs, where he launched a community of practice to support youth practitioners, and participated in the design of various youth programs, including an international youth advisory committee, microfinance programs, and youth participation strategies. He is the founder of Jozoor Micro Credit, a non-profit organization that aims to spark entrepreneurship among young Palestinian males in the rural areas of Palestine. He also successfully developed a multi-million dollar IT company from the concept stage to implementation, and subsequently managed its growth to three offices, three distribution centers and three million dollars of annual sales. He is a founding member of the Palestinian Information Technology Association in Ramallah, West Bank and served as a steering committee member for The World Bank Special Internet Project at the World Bank regional office in East Jerusalem. Hisham holds two masters’ degrees, an MBA and a Masters of Information Technology from the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.
David James-Wilson
Health, Livelihoods and Basic Education Specialist
David James-Wilson is a senior technical advisor, and capacity building specialist, in the areas of health promotion, sustainable livelihood development, and alternative basic education pathways for vulnerable populations of children and their families (such as OVC’s, street active children, institutionalized children and children with mental health and developmental diversity needs). David’s experience lies in: 1) innovative and responsive wrap-around programming for vulnerable populations; 2) strengthening locally-owned, public sector responses to the needs of a diverse range of vulnerable and especially vulnerable groups; and 3) the development and dissemination of a range of community based alternatives to institutional care. In a career spanning 17 years, David has provided technical assistance to NGO’s, local Governments and USAID missions in over 50 countries in the Former Soviet Union, Latin America, Southern Africa and the Middle East. His career has balanced direct service delivery to vulnerable populations; the management of interdisciplinary teams of health, education and livelihood service providers; the design and pilot implementation of innovative child and family-friendly services; along with extensive work in the areas of policy making and capacity development for government and NGO and civil society organizations seeking to strengthen local responses to the primary health, basic education and sustainable livelihood needs and aspirations of especially vulnerable populations of children and their families.
Cornelia Janke
Associate Center Director of the Global Learning Group
Ms. Janke has fifteen years' experience in the International Education field, with most of that time spent in the areas of project design, management and monitoring and evaluation. For example, in 1997, Janke worked with CARE/Honduras to conduct a situational analysis of rural girls’ opportunities to benefit from primary school and based on this, developed a project design that included elements of community participation in education, teacher mentors and skills training. Also in 1997, in collaboration with Ron Israel, Janke developed the project design for the Community School Alliances Project, a community participation in education project in Ghana. Since that time, Janke has been involved in the design of numerous GLG projects, particularly in the areas of community participation in education and participatory monitoring and evaluation. Recent examples include the development of the education component of the GAIT II project in Ghana, and the monitoring and evaluation/learning framework strategy for EDC’s Literacy and Community Empowerment Project in Afghanistan.
Mary Catherine Leherr
Chief of Party - EQUALL
Mary Catherine Leherr is a specialist in literacy and monitoring and evaluation, with an emphasis on international educational development, management information systems, and qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Ms Leherr currently manages the Ghana Educational Quality for All (EQUALL) project as Chief of Party, and has previously served as Technical Advisor in monitoring and evaluation during the first phase of the Ghana Community School Alliance (CSA) project. In addition to her work in Ghana, Ms Leherr has previously worked as a technical advisor and analyst on several other international and domestic education projects, including providing technical assistance in developing a monitoring and evaluation plan for the Girls’ and Women’s Education Project, a multi-country, multi-sector education project which aimed to increase girls’ participation in and completion of primary school.
Doug Lehman
Decentralization Planning
Douglas Lehman is the Chief of Party for a USAID-funded education decentralization program in Mali. He is an expert in the area of rural education development, with particular focus on helping countries accelerate progress to Education For All by reducing barriers to rural equity in education through decentralization. He pioneered the use of Geographic Information Systems as a policy dialogue tool to help education planners and decision-makers in eight countries understand the relative effectiveness of education system coverage norms. Mr. Lehman has over 15 years of African experience working in the PVO community, USAID and the World Bank.
Beryl Levinger
Alliance/Partnership Development, Organizational Development
Training and Human Resource Development
Dr. Levinger’s academic focus is the evaluation and management of international nongovernmental organizations, particularly those engaged in sustainable development. Within EDC, Dr. Levinger heads the Center for Organizational Learning and Development, a team specialized in assisting international NGOs, foundations, and development agencies with partnerships that respond to populations in need. She holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Nonprofit Management at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Maureen Malley
International Business Manager
Maureen has worked in the accounting and finance field for over 20 years. She has served as a certified public accountant in the auditing department for the public accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche, and as the Vice President of Finance for a publicly traded consumer products corporation. Prior to joining EDC in March 2006, Maureen worked as a business manager for several small non-profit corporations. Maureen has a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Fairfield University.
Elizabeth Markovic
Project Director, GWIT
Elizabeth has extensive professional experience in the international development field. She is a seasoned professional with extensive USAID field experience, working under demanding conditions with self-direction, independent judgment, and keen problem solving abilities. She has strong communication and negotiation skills, both verbal and written, and the ability to design, organize, and implement complex projects. Ms. Markovic is the director of the Global Workforce in Transition (GWIT) initiative. This cross-sectoral initiative provides technical assistance to developing countries in linking workforce and economic development strategies to promote job creation and a more skilled workforce. It helps countries increase the relevance and responsiveness of their education and training systems to immediate and longer-term economic needs. The 5-year $35 million project is funded by the US Agency for International Development. She recently conducted labor market anti trafficking workshops in Bahrain and a workforce competitiveness needs analysis in Armenia. Ms. Markovic is part of the South East Europe Regional Initiative for workforce development approaches.
Gustavo Payan
International Program Coordinator
Gustavo provides managerial and technical support to various projects including GWIT’s 8 rapid youth and workforce assessments that are being conducted in the Asia Near East region as well as other projects derived from EQUIP3 / Youth Trust. He joined GLG after spending almost two years at EDC’s Youth Employment Summit (YES) Campaign where he coordinated the preparations for the 2004 YES Mexico Summit and worked with the YES Kenya Network in engaging the Government of that country to host the YES Global Summit in 2006. Prior to joining EDC, he spent most of his professional career in the private sector in Juarez, Mexico and consulted for the municipal government. He also worked as Cultural Ambassador in Walt Disney World’s International Program at EPCOT Center in Florida and co-founded and led seminars for the Juarez chapter of Cuauhtli, a Mexico-wide non-profit aimed at building life skills for youth. He holds a M.A. in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University’s Heller School and a B.A. in International Business from Monterrey Tech.
Bill Potter
Technical Advisor for Relevance in Basic Education and Livelihoods
Bill has over 15 years of experience managing development projects in Africa. He has worked in several sectors and his skills range from designing and coordinating small development initiatives to managing large scale, government-funded programs. In addition to his extensive experience in formal and non-formal education, Mr. Potter has successfully managed innovative programs that integrate multiple areas of development including institutional capacity building, community participation in education, health and literacy.
Guerda Previlion
Field Project Coordinator - IDEJEN
Guerda is the Field Project Coordinator for the USAID-funded EQUIP3/Haiti Out-of-School Youth Livelihood Initiative. The project is designed to identify and address the needs of out-of-school young people, strengthen a selected number of the organizations and programs already working with young people, and ultimately enable Haiti’s young population to support themselves and their families. As the lead implementer of this initiative, she is responsible for promoting and representing its goals, as well as explaining its vision and objectives formally and informally to USAID, the NGO community, government, youth, youth groups, educators and beneficiaries. Previously, Ms. Previlion was the National Coordinator for Family Life Education to the Ministry of National Education in Haiti.
Paul Sully
Sr. Project Director
Paul Sully is the Education Development Center Project Director of EQUIP3/Youth Trust, a three-year old USAID- funded consortium of 13 international organizations focusing on preparing and engaging out-of-school youth in work, community and family life. For 10 years, Sully was the lead global technical specialist for Youth and Community Development for the US Peace Corps. In that capacity he supported and encouraged the creation of 16 new national youth programs and numerous cross-sectoral programming efforts. Sully authored the guidance on setting youth project goals, objectives, and monitoring indicators for Peace Corps. He also published Working with Youth: A Guide for Volunteers which is distributed to Peace Corps Volunteers worldwide. He has lived and worked in Colombia, Liberia, and Swaziland and worked in youth efforts with health, agricultural, environmental, small business, and educational sectors in numerous countries globally. He co-founded and coordinated two Washington- based working and interest groups on international youth development. He currently is a Board Member of Amigos De Las Americas, an international youth leadership NGO.
Chuck Wattles
Project Manager - Ruwaad
Chuck has been the home office Project Manager for the Youth Empowerment Program since its inception in October of 2005. He has 25 years of grassroots to boardroom experience in both international and domestic community and youth development programs and organizations. Internationally, he worked in Sudan with street children, refugee resettle, emergency housing, and disaster relief. While working at the Peace Corps headquarters he brought special focus to combining youth development and environmental programs. In the U.S. he has directed three nonprofit housing and community development organizations and served on the boards of two youth development organizations. His expertise includes community mobilization and participation, program design, training, strategic planning and organizational development. He has a Masters degree in International Administration from the School for International Training. He’s active in youth and adult sports programs.
Sussan C. Woodward
Acting Co-director - Exploring Humanitarian Law (EHL)
As Acting Co-director of Exploring Humanitarian Law, Sussan carries on Marilyn Felt ‘s ground-breaking work. Susan first joined EDC over 30 years ago, becoming Senior Curriculum Developer for Exploring Childhood. After directing development of a multicultural, cross-age program, A Language to Share, and other programs designed to promote cross-cultural knowledge and understanding, she joined Intentional Educations, a young educational software development company, where she designed programs for learners of all ages in all subject areas. She has authored over 50 print and multi-media materials. The opportunity to help create a program designed to involve youth throughout the world in gaining the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to understand international humanitarian law brought her back to EDC to create the curriculum and assist in its continuing world-wide implementation.
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