Snea Thinsan
Snea is currently serving as the English Language Program Manager and Distance Education Coordinator for The Higher Education Project (Afghanistan), based at the Center of Social Studies and International Education. He is a doctoral candidate in language education and he minors in Instructional Systems Technology. He has been one of the Nyaka School webmasters since 2003.

Read more about Snea at http://thinsan.org.

Twesigye J. Kaguri - Programs Director (Jan. 2007 - Dec. 2010)
Mr. Kaguri is a native of Uganda in East Africa. He has been actively involved with nonprofit organizations since 1992. In Uganda, Mr. Kaguri co-founded a human rights organization called Human Rights Concerns to help victims of human rights violations in Uganda and to educate the public about their rights. Mr. Kaguri came to the U.S. more than eight years ago as a visiting scholar studying Human Rights Advocacy at Columbia University in New York. Since that time he has been involved extensively in international community efforts as a Programs Assistant for People's Decade for Human Rights Education (PDHRE International - New York) and as a volunteer for various nonprofit organizations.

Having lost two family members to HIV/AIDS and having watched countless others suffer from losses to this disease, Mr. Kaguri wanted to become involved in efforts to combat the disease and alleviate the plight of those affected by the disease, such as the millions of orphans suffering from homelessness, poverty, hunger, and the lack of educational opportunities.

Mr. Kaguri initiated Nyaka and Kutamba AIDS Orphans Schools (projects of STSAD, Inc.) in a rural village in Uganda. These community schools provide quality education, housing, and support to orphans who would otherwise not have access to formal and informal education. The effort has involved not only Mr. Kaguri's participation in community service activities to help the orphans of Uganda, but has also involved fundraising efforts in the U.S. to heighten the awareness of the cultural issues surrounding the HIV/AIDS pandemic for active donors and supporters of this project.

Mr. Kaguri is currently an Assistant Director of Development in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University.

René Montgomery - Director (2004 - 2007)
Ms. Montgomery resides in Little Rock, Arkansas and graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration from Henderson State University of Arkansas. She currently serves at the Community Education Director for a local hospital in the Greater Little Rock metro area were she oversees the hospital’s community relation and physician’s referral program. She also holds program certificates in the areas of Professionals in American Healthcare Management and the Council for Organizational Continuous Quality Improvement.

Ms. Montgomery has worked in the field of managed care and health services administration for several years and has over 10 years experience working with nonprofit organizations in various areas of policy development, contractual development and implementation, community education, provider relations, and compliance reporting to state and federal entities. She is currently an active member of several healthcare organizations and committees including the SMH Community Relations Development Council and the American Society of Minority Health Care Services & Procurement Professionals. Her community involvement has included being a program advisor for an after school tutoring program and also being a volunteer and trainer for an adult literacy program. It is through her affiliations with nonprofit, community-based volunteer programs that she understands the positive impact community involvement can have when individuals choose to give of themselves for the purpose of positively impacting social causes.

Beronda L. Montgomery, Ph.D. - Director (2004 - 2007)
Beronda L. Montgomery graduated from the University of California, Davis with a Ph.D. in Plant Biology. Her experience in academic biology has been as student, researcher and instructor. She has published several peer-reviewed research articles related to plant biotechnology education and has been the recipient of numerous honors including a John B. Ervin Academic Scholarship, a National Science Foundation Plant Cell Biology Training Grant Predoctoral Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbial Biology.

Dr. Montgomery’s interest in nonprofits center on the relationship between agricultural biotechnology and economic development. Her specific nonprofit interests include technology transfer, networking and generally helping those in need gain access to scientific and educational information and expertise. Dr. Montgomery is currently a faculty member at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

Jennifer Thomson - (Jan. 2008 - Dec. 2010)
Jennifer works in domestic community development finance and is currently the Director of Program Development at the Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union. Prior to this, her focus was microfinance in Africa while serving as the Senior Program Officer for the Africa Region of the Hunger Project where she managed the African Women Food Farmer Initiative (AWFFI) loan fund of over $1 million in eight African countries. Her interest in microfinance began as an undergraduate student when living in Senegal, West Africa, working with African Environment and Development (ENDA) in Dakar.

Jennifer holds a Master of International Affairs (MIA) from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. Originally from the Boston area, she currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband.

Aimé Wata - Director (2004 - 2007)
Aimé Wata is a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is a lawyer by training from the University of Kinshasa (1982-1988) and attended the 1996 Columbia University and 2002 Geneva University Human Rights Programs.

Mr. Wata worked as judge in Kivu Province from 1989 to 1997 in the country that was then recognized as Zaire. He worked also for various NGOs at the grassroots level and later for international agencies including the International Committee of the Red Cross (1997-1998), Amnesty International (1999) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, 2000-2001).

Mr.Wata holds a Masters of Advanced Studies in Children rights (IUKB/Sion and Fribourg University in Switzerland) and is a PhD Candidate in international children protection (Fribourg University). He also does field missions for the UNHCR as Protection Officer in refugee camps.

Mr. Wata lives in Geneva Switzerland. He has written two novels (both in French) and runs marathons, including the New York City Marathon he completed in 2002.

Matthew Fulakeza, Ph.D. - Advisor
Dr. Matthew Fulakeza, a native of Malawi, graduated from Florida State University with a Ph.D. in Meteorology. He is an expert in the area of regional climate modeling, with special focus on African regions. Dr. Fulakeza’s work includes studying the interaction between land surface (particularly soil moisture) and atmosphere, which leads to the understanding of mechanisms of climate variability and predictions. He has published his research findings in several peer-reviewed research publications.

Dr. Fulakeza received a 2-year National Research Council Award in 1998 to work as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at NASA/GISS in New York City. Currently he is working on West African and Southern African weather systems at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University in New York.

Dr. Fulakeza is interested in both the scientific component of STSAD, Inc. and it’s educational project of helping HIV/AIDS orphans around the world beginning with those countries that are most highly affected.

Jude Mugerwa, M.D. - Director (2004 - 2007)
Dr. Mugerwa is a native of Uganda, East Africa. He is a board-certified physician in Internal Medicine. Having graduated from medical school at Makerere University in Uganda, Dr. Mugerwa moved to Cleveland, USA where he successfully completed his residency training in Internal Medicine at University Hospitals of Cleveland - Case Western Reserve University. His academic interests span both research and clinical care in the field of HIV and cardiovascular diseases. He has published some of his work in peer-reviewed journals both here in the USA and abroad. He is currently pursuing a fellowship in cardiovascular medicine at MetroHealth Medical Center - Case Western Reserve University.

Dr. Mugerwa’s interests include global networking and technology transfer in the field of health care access, health management and health informatics. It is his goal that one day, the average citizen of Uganda will have access to basic health information and modern health facilities at a reasonable cost.

Dale Val, Ph.D. - Advisor
Dale is a native of Australia, currently living in Northern California. A dedicated fundraiser for the Nyaka School, Dale was in attendance at the opening ceremony and helped ! prepare the foundation for the second set of classes on site. As an elder and leader of the Pathfinders at Woodland Adventist Church, Dale is dedicated to working with youth in the United States and abroad.

Emma Mugisha
Emma Mugisha is currently the Chair of the Board of Advisors.

Sempa Baker
Sempa Baker is currently the Secretary and County Coordinator.

Promise Ambrose
Promise is the Chair of Kampala, Friends of Nyaka.