BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Charles Field-Marsham - Chairman

Charles Field-Marsham is a Canadian entrepreneurial businessman with more than 25 years of experience in building businesses. He is the founder of Kestrel Capital Management Capital (KCMC), a company which provides strategic, investment and management consulting services to businesses in and outside Canada. Charles also owns and is chairman of the following businesses: Kestrel Capital, Panafrican Equipment Group, and Kenya Fluorspar, a fluorspar mine he purchased in 1997 but closed in 2017. Collectively, the companies employ approximately 400 people with operations in Canada, Dubai, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. In January 2020, Charles invested in and became a board member of Slingshot Sports LLC, a world leading brand of kiteboarding equipment, headquartered in Hood River, Oregon.   

Jane Manners - Secretary

A lawyer by training, Jane is currently completing her PhD in American legal history at Princeton University. Before coming to Princeton, Jane received both her JD and her AB from Harvard, where she was captain of the Harvard indoor and outdoor track teams. After law school, she clerked for Judge Mark Wolf, chief judge of the federal district court of Massachusetts. She has also worked as a teacher, a grant maker, a journalist, and a presidential campaign staffer. Starting in the fall of 2018, Jane will  be a Bernard and Irene Schwartz Fellow at the New-York Historical Society in New York, NY.

Amos Kipyegon Kitur - Board Member

Kipyegon, PhD, is an Associate on the Private Equity team at OrbiMed, the world’s largest healthcare investment fund. Prior to OrbiMed, he was a Consultant in the New York office of The Boston Consulting Group, where he worked in the Healthcare practice area. He also co-founded Sarora Dairies LLC/Ltd, a company that processes and distributes fresh milk and yogurt in Kenya. Kip obtained a PhD in Pharmacology from Columbia University. While at Columbia, he received the Brian F. Hoffman Award for Academic Excellence in Pharmacology and was an HHMI MIG Fellow. He completed a B.A. in Chemistry from Harvard College. He was born and raised near Bomet, a farming town in Kenya, as a last-born child in a family of 14 children, and he is part of KenSAP’s pioneer Class of 2004.

Tony Barclay - Board Member

Tony is Director of Development Management and Practice in the Global Human Development Program at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. For 30 years, Tony was a senior executive at DAI, an employee-owned international development consulting firm, where he served as CEO from 1999 to 2008. During his tenure, DAI grew from a boutique firm to a global company with annual revenues of $375 million and 2,500 employees working in more than 75 countries. Honored as Executive of the Year in the October 2008 Greater Washington Government Contractor Awards ceremony, Tony has had a long career as a global development professional. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in western Kenya in the late 1960s, and returned there for his Ph.D. research in anthropology on the impact of a large-scale sugar project. Tony was a founding board member of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, and is a past President of the Washington Chapter of the Society for International Development. He chairs the international board of the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya, and has served on numerous other boards.

Rita Field-Marsham - Board Member

Rita is a Kenyan-born lawyer. She worked in the private sector as a lawyer and founder of Field-Marsham & co advocates, worked in the executive arm of government as prosecuting counsel at the State Law Office in Kenya and in the in legal aid sector as a pro bono lawyer for the high court and court of appeal in Kenya. From 2005-2010 she served on the board of Young Patron’s Circle (YPC) at the Royal Ontario Museum. In 2009, she founded Knowledge Empowering Youth (KEY), a charitable program that provides turn-key libraries in Africa of which she remains the CEO. In 2011, she co-founded FMNB Projects, a Canadian based for profit social venture.

Wandia Gichuru - Board Member

Wandia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Vivo Activewear, a retailing clothing business that was started in 2011. In 7 years of operation, Vivo has blossomed into the “go-to” store for stylish yet comfortable, functional and affordable women’s clothing in Kenya.  Prior to starting Vivo, Wandia spent over 15 years as international development adviser and held positions with the UK government, the UN and the World Bank. She is also passionate about transforming lives through job creation and supporting women in business. She is based in Kenya.

Daniel Szlapak - Board Member

Daniel was born and raised in Kenya. Daniel is an investor and was formerly the Head of Global Operations for Branch International. Prior to Branch, Daniel held positions in a Pan-African hotel business, a software startup in Silicon Valley, and JP Morgan in New York. Daniel has a BA in Economics from Tufts University (Magna Cum Laude) and an MBA from Kellogg, Northwestern University.