Lioba Moshi
Board Chair
A PhD holder in Linguistics from UCLA, Lioba Moshi is the former department head of Comparative Literature and former director of the University of Georgia African Studies Institute. Now retired from UGA, her major accomplishments include: Life Time Achievement by the South East Language and Literature Association (2016), the Richard Rieff Internationalization Award (2011) and Distinguished University Professor (2007), an honor given to individuals who have demonstrated significant scholarly achievements and University service. She was instrumental in the development of the African languages program at the University of Georgia, including one certificate and two minors in African Studies. She spearheaded leadership efforts that moved African Studies from area studies to Institute status. In addition to research and publication of several books and articles about language and culture, Dr. Moshi was instrumental in establishing summer study abroad programs for students in different parts of Africa. With her students in the University of Georgia’s Service-Learning Program, she initiated the 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization UPENDO One Kid-At-a-Time Inc. to benefit children born in difficult environments. She currently serves the Foundation as the Board Chair and oversees the different projects sponsored by the Foundation.
Christa Deissler
Assistant Board Chair
Christa is a lifelong learner who cherishes every opportunity to grow as an individual and connect with people from different backgrounds and experiences. She moved to the Athens, Georgia area in 1999 to begin her graduate studies in Instructional Technology. She has an MEd and a PhD in Instructional Technology from the University of Georgia. Christa has worked across the spectrum of P-20 education in Georgia in various roles including school librarian, instructional technology specialist, clinical faculty and program coordinator for UGA’s school library and instructional technology graduate programs, and most recently as a data analyst for the Greene County School System in Greensboro, Georgia. Her connection with Upendo OKAT began in 2019 when she had the opportunity to participate in a US Department of Education/Fulbright-Hays funded Group Project Abroad to Tanzania. During that trip, she met Dr. Lioba Moshi and Maria Harding-Blanchard who shared their passion for the children of Upendo. Christa has returned to Tanzania twice since then as part of the leadership team for subsequent GPAs. Over the course of those activities, she organized a crowd sourced donation of digital tablets for the children of Upendo OKAT and continues to work with the children and the OKAT home staff to help the children learn and grow with the resources they have. Her connection to Upendo and the people of Tanzania is so strong and important to her, that she has also brought her daughter and husband along on the journey. As a member of the board, Christa is the website manager, will serve as part of the education team, and will lead the development of the Library Learning Space at the children’s center.
Kathleen Harris
Board Secretary
Kathleen T. Harris holds a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and a JD from Loyola Law School Los Angeles. She served as the founding Associate Director of the University Honors Program at the University of California, Riverside. At the University of Georgia, she managed the Foundation Fellows Program; she expanded both the number of fellowships awarded and the geographic and intellectual reach of the programs and opportunities she developed for the fellows. In 1998 Foundation Fellows were the first UGA students to travel and study in Tanzania, thanks to a pilot project co-created by Harris and African Studies Institute Director Lioba Moshi. A three-time Fulbright awardee, she established Loyola Marymount University’s first office dedicated to supporting national and international scholarship applicants. While at LMU she also successfully competed for funding under the University of Southern California’s Irvine Foundation-funded Campus Diversity Initiative.
Apart from her professional record, Harris has a consistent record of civic engagement. While residing in Riverside, she was appointed to the Human Relations Commission by the city council, with assignments on the Housing and Homeless and Law Enforcement Review Committees. She is a founding member of the Regaining Access Project, a legal aid nonprofit that helps rehabilitated offenders.
She currently has a private practice advising college and graduate school bound students. She is focused on educational programs and coordinates fundraising for the Foundation.
Hellen Mwangoka
Board Treasurer
Hellen Mwangoka holds a Bachelors’ in Business Administration from University of Central Arkansas and an MBA with Concentration in Finance from Maryville University. Currently, she works as a Professional Services Manager for Daston Corporation which is partner of Oracle Corporation Global Unit, NetSuite.
Hellen has over 8years of experience in the NetSuite ERP solution. This expertise encompasses a concentration in Project Management, Resource management and GovCon micro vertical. She has ran multiple sales cycles at Oracle Netsuite and helped different customers increase their ROI by streamlining their business processes using NetSuite's Accounting Platform and Daston’s DCAA on demand suite app.
Prior to her current position, she gained more Accounting and Finance knowledge by working at back-office billing and invoicing departments for various companies like Centene Corporation and Northern Trust Bank Chicago.
As a Tanzanian Native, Hellen has always had the passion to give back to her home country in any shape or form. As a new board member of UPENDO-OKAT she will be providing Accounting and Finance management advice for the foundation.
Maria
Blanchard
Fundraising Committee Chair
A two-time graduate of the University of Georgia, Maria Harding Blanchard holds an Master’s of Science in Education for Speech-Language Pathology. During her undergraduate years, she visited Tanzania three times to participate in Sustainable Service-Learning activities, once as a student and twice as a graduate assistant. Her interest in Tanzania and children in challenged environments began in 2015 and has grown stronger every year since, particularly in her role in leading Service-Learning students in their experience abroad in Tanzania. She has also continued to work with Upendo-OKAT, volunteering her services where needed, particularly in communications with different agencies and with fundraising. After graduating, Maria took a gap year (2017-18) and returned to Tanzania for 9 months to teach at a local university. During that period, she volunteered at the UPENDO orphanage and home every week. As a Foundation member, Maria’s role will be to strengthen the vision she has developed for the Foundation, a focus on students’ participation in service-learning, supporting fundraising efforts, and designing programs suitable for the UPENDO children that develop independent thinking, creativity, and self-worth.
Alex Wright
Fundraising Committee
Alex Wright is a malariologist with 15 years of experience in overseas global public health. She graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Science in Public Health and a Certificate in African Studies. She then pursued her graduate work at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, obtaining a Master of Science in Control of Infectious Disease, with a specialty in Malaria. She is currently completing her Doctorate of Public Health at Tulane University in Health Leadership, Advocacy and Equity. Alex has worked for the London School of Tropical Medicine for 15 years as an Overseas Research Fellow Malariologist, specializing in capacity strengthening for vector control laboratories. She was based for 13 years in Moshi, Tanzania working at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College (KCMUCo Moshi) and the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR Muheza), where she traveled and worked in remote areas of Tanzania conducting clinical malaria control work.
Alex has worked for the last 8 years as a consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), where she is assigned to 15 countries in Asia, South America, Central America, and East and West Africa working on mosquito laboratory capacity building and vector-borne disease outbreaks. She credits her professional success to her wonderful mentors at the University of Georgia African Studies Institute and College of Public Health.
Freda Scott Giles
Fundraising Committee
Freda Scott Giles earned her PhD at the City University of New York. A specialist in African American Theater, directing and acting, she is the author of articles focusing on early African-American theater, drama and theater of the Harlem Renaissance period and contemporary African American theater practitioners. A professional actor and member of Actors Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA, Dr. Giles has performed a number of roles off-Broadway as well as in film, television and radio. She recently retired from UGA where she taught courses in theater history, African American theater, African theater, and directing for the stage; she directed a number of University Theater productions and was honored to become a General Sandy Beaver Teaching Professor. She served as associate director for the Institute for African American Studies and was on the affiliate faculty of the African Studies Institute and the Institute for Women’s Studies. She is a founding editor of Continuum, an online open access journal of African/Diaspora theater, drama and performance published by Black Theater Network. She currently serves on the board of Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art and the Black History Month committee at the Morton Theater. She is a charter member of the Athens chapter of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and is a member of Emerita Scholars, Links, Incorporated and Delta Kappa Gamma.
Todd Ferry
Fundraising Committee
Todd Ferry is a Senior Research Associate and Faculty Fellow at the Center for Public Interest Design within the Portland State University School of Architecture. He teaches a range of architecture design studios and courses on Public Interest Design, Design Thinking for Social Innovation, and Design-Build Fieldwork. He holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Georgia. While still a student at UGA, Todd participated in the first Maymester in Tanzania program in 2000 and subsequently co-founded the nonprofit that would become OKAT. This transformative experience has continued to inform Todd’s work as a leading figure in the field of Public Interest Design. His current work investigates how new architecture typologies can support traditionally underserved communities through radically participatory processes and seeks to develop innovative tools and models of engagement to aid in this effort.
He is a Co-Founder of PSU’s Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative (HRAC) where he leads the center’s alternative shelter initiatives. A commitment to sustainability and environmental justice is foundational to all of Todd’s work, and he was recently the recipient of the university’s Excellence in Sustainability Teaching Award
J. Cynthia McDermott
Advisory Member
Dr. J. Cynthia McDermott began her education career as a high school English teacher and has been a teacher and teacher educator for 50 plus years. She has been a university faculty member working with preservice teachers during her recent career and is recently retired from the department chair of education at Antioch University Los Angeles position. A Soros Fellow serving in Moldova and Romania, she was appointed a board member for the International Step by Step Association where she served as secretary. She received two Fulbright awards, one in Sarajevo and one in Poland working with teachers to increase their pedagogical skills. She continues to volunteer for the Fulbright Association. Her pedagogical philosophy is based on the work of John Dewey and others that relates to a progressive student-centered approach. Being a mother of two and a grandmother of 5 is her happiest and proudest accomplishment. Her many publications can be accessed at http://antiochla.academia.edu/CynthiaMcDermott
Dr. Arthur N. Dunning, PhD
Advisory member
ARTHUR N. DUNNING is a veteran administrator, scholar, and lecturer with a distinguished track record in higher education in Alabama and Georgia, including service as Vice Chancellor for International Programs and Outreach for the University of Alabama System; Senior Vice Chancellor for Human and External Resources with the University System of Georgia; Vice President for Public Service and Outreach at the University of Georgia; and President of Albany State University. He now resides in Greenville, SC.
Karen B. Baynes-Dunning
Advisory member
A former juvenile court judge, Karen Baynes-Dunning has dedicated her career to improving the quality of life for children, youth and families. For over 30 years, she has served in numerous leadership positions in the public and nonprofit sectors to help improve the public policies and services that affect communities.
In addition to her service on the bench, Baynes-Dunning served as the Associate Director for Governmental Services and Research at University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government; and focused on educating the next generation of the workforce as a visiting professor at the Emory University School of Law and Associate Professor at the University of Alabama.
Since 2013, Baynes-Dunning has served as federal court-appointed monitor, overseeing reform efforts within the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services. From April 2019 to April 2020, she also served as the interim President & CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a large social justice organization headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, with offices in 5 states and the District of Columbia. She presently serves as Chair of the SPLC Board of Directors. She now resides in Greenville, SC.