Board
M. Collin Brown is a practicing attorney in Washington, DC. Previously, Mr. Brown worked as a legislative attorney for the Tennessee General Assembly, as the Southeastern grassroots organizer for DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) and the ONE Campaign <http://www.one.org/> to fight global AIDS and poverty and he practiced law in Nashville, Tennessee. He earned his B.A. in English at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama as well as his J.D. at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University.
Michelle Conn serves as a director of development for International Justice Mission (IJM). She has served this organization for the past 11 years and has seen the organization grow from a staff of four and a budget of $450,000 in 1998 to a staff of almost 400 through offices around the world and a budget of more than $21 million. Prior to her service with IJM, Michelle worked with the United Ways in Jacksonville, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; and Nashville, Tennessee with increasing responsibility for the annual community-wide fund raising campaign. Michelle is married to Joe Ed Conn and the mother of Ethan (8). They live in Whites Creek, TN. Michelle serves as a volunteer soccer coach through the YMCA, as a prayer partner through The Next Door and as an instructor through Dale Carnegie training.
Lon Cherry served as Chief Financial Officer for The Lampo Group, Inc. in Brentwood, TN, better known as Dave Ramsey's for the last five years. He is currently pursuing a new technology venture. Prior positions include Chief Operating Officer for Interlinc, a company in Franklin, TN, and Controller for a group of nonprofit organizations in Adrian, Michigan. The non-profits were founded by industrialists and philanthropists Orville and Ruth Merillat from whom Lon learned much about making a difference in the world through giving. His desire to impact Africa has grown out of his work in Sierra Leone, where he served for two years as Business Manager of Mattru UBC Hospital. Lon earned a Bachelors degree from Huntington University and an MBA from The University of Michigan. He and his wife, Cathy, live in Franklin, Tennessee with their four children.
Anne Taylor Cregger currently serves as Senior Program Director in a consulting firm in Alexandria, Virginia. She brings over 25 years of experience in leadership training and formal mentoring programs and provides tactical direction to the work of federal and corporate organizations to transform their cultures into ones based increasingly on trust, collaboration and knowledge sharing. She is Senior Fellow and ex-officio board member at The Washington Institute and works there to strengthen awareness of how our faith informs our vocation which molds our culture. Ms. Cregger was the founding Director of the Falls Church Fellows Program, an internship program designed to serve recent college graduates desiring to deepen their alignment with God's purposes in all parts of their lives, including the marketplace, their faith communities, academic work and personal relationships. She maintains and promotes a deep interest in communication skills and coaching groups and individuals to best grasp how their unique gifts and experiences might further God's kingdom. Ms. Cregger earned her BS in Mathematics at the University of Richmond and MS in Organization Development and Knowledge Management at George Mason University. She lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband, George Patterson, and has four grown sons.
Reagan Demas is Of Counsel at Baker & McKenzie, with a practice focused on evaluating investment and business opportunities with clarity and conducting investigations and due diligence in Africa and other developing jurisdictions worldwide. His areas of expertise include sub-Saharan Africa, anti-corruption (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act), and local law and U.S. law compliance, and he has written and spoken extensively on corruption and conducting business in Africa. Demas formerly served as Director of Operations in Africa for International Justice Mission. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School and lives with his wife Alice in Washington D.C.
As the Director of The Washington Institute, Steven Garber has a classroom among many people in many places--wherever he is and whatever he is doing, always wanting to understand more fully the integral character of faith to vocation to culture. Author of The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior (Second Ed., 2007), he writes frequently for Comment, and in addition was a contributor to the volumes Faith Goes to Work: Reflections From the Marketplace, and Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalogue, as well as to the Mars Hill Audio journal, "Tacit Knowing, Truthful Knowing: The Life and Work of Michael Polanyi." For many years he taught on Capitol Hill in the American Studies Program, and is particularly interested in the relationship of popular culture to political culture; from that appointment he became the Scholar-in-Residence for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He serves as a board member for Ransom Fellowship, the Blood:Water Mission, and the Kairos Project, and as a consultant for the Wedgwood Circle, the Murdock Trust, and the Mars Corporation. A native of the great valleys of Colorado and California, he is married to Meg and is the father of five children whose own callings have scattered them around the world. For many years he and his family have been members of The Falls Church.
Cosma Gatere has worked for various private sector, philanthropic, and public organizations and as a strategy and marketing communications consultant in Africa, Europe, and the US. In the mid 90s he worked with Ogilvy & Mather Advertising (East Africa) as Group Account Director, before joining the Coca-Cola Company where he was in charge of marketing communications in 39 countries across Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands. Cosma set up and ran a firm providing marketing communications services and media software development, before moving into a career in development with the World Bank. His background is in communications, entrepreneurship, strategy, marketing and leadership development and he is active in community empowerment and advocacy for the right of persons with disability. He was founder chairman of the Down Syndrome Society of Kenya, and founded in Virginia, USA the Uwezo Foundation, a nonprofit that seeks to provide empowerment and opportunity for persons with intellectual disability in Africa. Cosma currently coordinates policy communication for the Africa region of the World Bank, working out of Washington DC. He holds an MSc in Communications Science from the University of Paris, a BA from the University of Nairobi, and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK. A member of The Falls Church and the Nairobi Chapel, Cosma is married to Betty, and they have three children.
Brad Gibson has worked in the financial services industry since 1990, and in1996 he co-founded ProVest Management Group, Inc. Interested in creating a more comprehensive investment services firm, he joined his current partners in establishing Ascend Advisory Group in 2001. Ascend provides financial and estate planning for families and individuals nationwide, and presently manages over $350 million in assets for its clients. A native of Central Ohio and a graduate of The Ohio State University in 1982, Brad's business background includes advertising, counseling and small business ownership. He also earned a Master of Divinity from Grace Theological Seminary in 1987, and served as an associate pastor in central Ohio for three years. Brad currently serves on the board of Housing Services Alliance, Inc, an Ohio non-profit organization dedicated to providing aid to senior citizens in assisted-living facilities. He is also a Board Member of VisionTrust International based in Colorado Springs, CO. VisionTrust provides leadership, counseling, and financial resources to over twenty orphanage ministries throughout the world, including those in Thailand, India, the Dominican Republic, Brazil and Africa. Brad and his wife Ginger have four children; Bethany, Daniel, Michael and Amy. The Gibsons make their home in Powell, Ohio and are members of Terra Nova Community Church.
Mike Hamilton (bio coming soon)
Dan Haseltine, husband to Katie and father to Noah and Max, is the lead singer of the multi-platinum, multi-Grammy winning music group, Jars of Clay. Dan is also the founder of Blood:Water Mission. His vision is one of humanization, to bring meaning to statistics by translating the debilitating and overwhelming numbers to the end that they would represent a single face and a significant personal story. Dan's artistic titles include songwriter, producer, film composer, music supervisor and art designer. He is a public speaker and freelance writer who has written articles for print and online publications including Moody, CCM, Christianity Today, World Vision, Campus Life and Beliefnet. Dan is a regular columnist for Relevant magazine. He has written children's stories and contributed essays for books about worship music, Johnny Cash, HIV/AIDS in Africa, social justice and church reform.
Rich Hoops began his 14-year career in the personal computer industry in 1986 with Tandy Corporation. In early 1989, he was recruited to Austin, Texas to join Dell Computer Corporation embarking on an exciting 11 year career with Dell where he held a variety of senior management and executive positions in sales, marketing and business development contributing to Dell's ascent from a small direct marketing company to one of the world's largest and most successful PC Company. After leaving, Dell in 2000, Rich founded, and served as CEO of Outdoor Intelligence, a startup focused on delivering digital map information and data to the recreational fishing industry. In the fall of 2001, while still running his new company, Rich became involved with Social Venture Partners, a nonprofit organization whose partners invest both time and money in the development of small, innovative area nonprofits. After transitioning out of his start-up in 2002, Rich has dedicated more and more of his time towards assisting area nonprofits in building operational/organizational capacity through strategic consulting and general business coaching. Rich continues to serve on the Board of SVP where he served as Board Chair from 2004-2006. Rich has a Bachelors degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia and an MBA from the University of Chicago with an emphasis on Entrepreneurship and Organizational Strategy. He and his wife, Traci, have four daughters and live in Boulder, CO.
Clydette Powell, MD, MPH, currently serves as Medical Officer for the US Agency for International Development, based out of Washington, DC. Within the Bureau for Global Health, her areas of focus include public health, nutrition, and infectious disease (TB/HIV/AIDS). Dr Powell began her public health work in Africa in 1976 and has continued to work for public health solutions in many other parts of the world. Her part-time clinical practice in HIV/AIDS is at The Children's National Medical Center, Washington, DC. She has a medical degree from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Master's in Public Health from the University of California (Los Angeles) School of Public Health.
Moses Pulei teaches Theology, Bible, and Mission at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. Moses studied at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California and at Whitworth University then Whitworth College. He grew up in Kenya and Tanzania in the area near Amboseli National park at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Before coming to America he worked for the government, Young Life, and as a private tour and safari guide. He has continued serve the Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania by working with LifeWater International to provide clean water. He has also helped establish the Makobe Children's Home that serves AIDS orphans in the Shimba Hills in Kenya's costal province and continues to assist in the development of small businesses in the Maasai communities in Kenya and Tanzania.
Joel Wickre works as a global health policy analyst and strategist for Management Sciences for Health in Cambridge, MA. He graduated from Dartmouth College with high honors in Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, and went on to live and work with poor communities in Nicaragua, Mexico, and Kenya. He holds an M.S. in Public Health from the University of California Berkeley, where he wrote an ethnography of changing AIDS stigma in a Kenyan village. From 2006 to 2009 he served as the founding executive director of the Lwala Community Alliance. Joel is interested in the interaction of international health and development policy and global social discourse.
Michelle Conn serves as a director of development for International Justice Mission (IJM). She has served this organization for the past 11 years and has seen the organization grow from a staff of four and a budget of $450,000 in 1998 to a staff of almost 400 through offices around the world and a budget of more than $21 million. Prior to her service with IJM, Michelle worked with the United Ways in Jacksonville, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; and Nashville, Tennessee with increasing responsibility for the annual community-wide fund raising campaign. Michelle is married to Joe Ed Conn and the mother of Ethan (8). They live in Whites Creek, TN. Michelle serves as a volunteer soccer coach through the YMCA, as a prayer partner through The Next Door and as an instructor through Dale Carnegie training.
Lon Cherry served as Chief Financial Officer for The Lampo Group, Inc. in Brentwood, TN, better known as Dave Ramsey's for the last five years. He is currently pursuing a new technology venture. Prior positions include Chief Operating Officer for Interlinc, a company in Franklin, TN, and Controller for a group of nonprofit organizations in Adrian, Michigan. The non-profits were founded by industrialists and philanthropists Orville and Ruth Merillat from whom Lon learned much about making a difference in the world through giving. His desire to impact Africa has grown out of his work in Sierra Leone, where he served for two years as Business Manager of Mattru UBC Hospital. Lon earned a Bachelors degree from Huntington University and an MBA from The University of Michigan. He and his wife, Cathy, live in Franklin, Tennessee with their four children.
Anne Taylor Cregger currently serves as Senior Program Director in a consulting firm in Alexandria, Virginia. She brings over 25 years of experience in leadership training and formal mentoring programs and provides tactical direction to the work of federal and corporate organizations to transform their cultures into ones based increasingly on trust, collaboration and knowledge sharing. She is Senior Fellow and ex-officio board member at The Washington Institute and works there to strengthen awareness of how our faith informs our vocation which molds our culture. Ms. Cregger was the founding Director of the Falls Church Fellows Program, an internship program designed to serve recent college graduates desiring to deepen their alignment with God's purposes in all parts of their lives, including the marketplace, their faith communities, academic work and personal relationships. She maintains and promotes a deep interest in communication skills and coaching groups and individuals to best grasp how their unique gifts and experiences might further God's kingdom. Ms. Cregger earned her BS in Mathematics at the University of Richmond and MS in Organization Development and Knowledge Management at George Mason University. She lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband, George Patterson, and has four grown sons.
Reagan Demas is Of Counsel at Baker & McKenzie, with a practice focused on evaluating investment and business opportunities with clarity and conducting investigations and due diligence in Africa and other developing jurisdictions worldwide. His areas of expertise include sub-Saharan Africa, anti-corruption (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act), and local law and U.S. law compliance, and he has written and spoken extensively on corruption and conducting business in Africa. Demas formerly served as Director of Operations in Africa for International Justice Mission. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School and lives with his wife Alice in Washington D.C.
As the Director of The Washington Institute, Steven Garber has a classroom among many people in many places--wherever he is and whatever he is doing, always wanting to understand more fully the integral character of faith to vocation to culture. Author of The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior (Second Ed., 2007), he writes frequently for Comment, and in addition was a contributor to the volumes Faith Goes to Work: Reflections From the Marketplace, and Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalogue, as well as to the Mars Hill Audio journal, "Tacit Knowing, Truthful Knowing: The Life and Work of Michael Polanyi." For many years he taught on Capitol Hill in the American Studies Program, and is particularly interested in the relationship of popular culture to political culture; from that appointment he became the Scholar-in-Residence for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He serves as a board member for Ransom Fellowship, the Blood:Water Mission, and the Kairos Project, and as a consultant for the Wedgwood Circle, the Murdock Trust, and the Mars Corporation. A native of the great valleys of Colorado and California, he is married to Meg and is the father of five children whose own callings have scattered them around the world. For many years he and his family have been members of The Falls Church.
Cosma Gatere has worked for various private sector, philanthropic, and public organizations and as a strategy and marketing communications consultant in Africa, Europe, and the US. In the mid 90s he worked with Ogilvy & Mather Advertising (East Africa) as Group Account Director, before joining the Coca-Cola Company where he was in charge of marketing communications in 39 countries across Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands. Cosma set up and ran a firm providing marketing communications services and media software development, before moving into a career in development with the World Bank. His background is in communications, entrepreneurship, strategy, marketing and leadership development and he is active in community empowerment and advocacy for the right of persons with disability. He was founder chairman of the Down Syndrome Society of Kenya, and founded in Virginia, USA the Uwezo Foundation, a nonprofit that seeks to provide empowerment and opportunity for persons with intellectual disability in Africa. Cosma currently coordinates policy communication for the Africa region of the World Bank, working out of Washington DC. He holds an MSc in Communications Science from the University of Paris, a BA from the University of Nairobi, and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK. A member of The Falls Church and the Nairobi Chapel, Cosma is married to Betty, and they have three children.
Brad Gibson has worked in the financial services industry since 1990, and in1996 he co-founded ProVest Management Group, Inc. Interested in creating a more comprehensive investment services firm, he joined his current partners in establishing Ascend Advisory Group in 2001. Ascend provides financial and estate planning for families and individuals nationwide, and presently manages over $350 million in assets for its clients. A native of Central Ohio and a graduate of The Ohio State University in 1982, Brad's business background includes advertising, counseling and small business ownership. He also earned a Master of Divinity from Grace Theological Seminary in 1987, and served as an associate pastor in central Ohio for three years. Brad currently serves on the board of Housing Services Alliance, Inc, an Ohio non-profit organization dedicated to providing aid to senior citizens in assisted-living facilities. He is also a Board Member of VisionTrust International based in Colorado Springs, CO. VisionTrust provides leadership, counseling, and financial resources to over twenty orphanage ministries throughout the world, including those in Thailand, India, the Dominican Republic, Brazil and Africa. Brad and his wife Ginger have four children; Bethany, Daniel, Michael and Amy. The Gibsons make their home in Powell, Ohio and are members of Terra Nova Community Church.
Mike Hamilton (bio coming soon)
Dan Haseltine, husband to Katie and father to Noah and Max, is the lead singer of the multi-platinum, multi-Grammy winning music group, Jars of Clay. Dan is also the founder of Blood:Water Mission. His vision is one of humanization, to bring meaning to statistics by translating the debilitating and overwhelming numbers to the end that they would represent a single face and a significant personal story. Dan's artistic titles include songwriter, producer, film composer, music supervisor and art designer. He is a public speaker and freelance writer who has written articles for print and online publications including Moody, CCM, Christianity Today, World Vision, Campus Life and Beliefnet. Dan is a regular columnist for Relevant magazine. He has written children's stories and contributed essays for books about worship music, Johnny Cash, HIV/AIDS in Africa, social justice and church reform.
Rich Hoops began his 14-year career in the personal computer industry in 1986 with Tandy Corporation. In early 1989, he was recruited to Austin, Texas to join Dell Computer Corporation embarking on an exciting 11 year career with Dell where he held a variety of senior management and executive positions in sales, marketing and business development contributing to Dell's ascent from a small direct marketing company to one of the world's largest and most successful PC Company. After leaving, Dell in 2000, Rich founded, and served as CEO of Outdoor Intelligence, a startup focused on delivering digital map information and data to the recreational fishing industry. In the fall of 2001, while still running his new company, Rich became involved with Social Venture Partners, a nonprofit organization whose partners invest both time and money in the development of small, innovative area nonprofits. After transitioning out of his start-up in 2002, Rich has dedicated more and more of his time towards assisting area nonprofits in building operational/organizational capacity through strategic consulting and general business coaching. Rich continues to serve on the Board of SVP where he served as Board Chair from 2004-2006. Rich has a Bachelors degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia and an MBA from the University of Chicago with an emphasis on Entrepreneurship and Organizational Strategy. He and his wife, Traci, have four daughters and live in Boulder, CO.
Clydette Powell, MD, MPH, currently serves as Medical Officer for the US Agency for International Development, based out of Washington, DC. Within the Bureau for Global Health, her areas of focus include public health, nutrition, and infectious disease (TB/HIV/AIDS). Dr Powell began her public health work in Africa in 1976 and has continued to work for public health solutions in many other parts of the world. Her part-time clinical practice in HIV/AIDS is at The Children's National Medical Center, Washington, DC. She has a medical degree from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Master's in Public Health from the University of California (Los Angeles) School of Public Health.
Moses Pulei teaches Theology, Bible, and Mission at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. Moses studied at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California and at Whitworth University then Whitworth College. He grew up in Kenya and Tanzania in the area near Amboseli National park at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Before coming to America he worked for the government, Young Life, and as a private tour and safari guide. He has continued serve the Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania by working with LifeWater International to provide clean water. He has also helped establish the Makobe Children's Home that serves AIDS orphans in the Shimba Hills in Kenya's costal province and continues to assist in the development of small businesses in the Maasai communities in Kenya and Tanzania.
Joel Wickre works as a global health policy analyst and strategist for Management Sciences for Health in Cambridge, MA. He graduated from Dartmouth College with high honors in Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, and went on to live and work with poor communities in Nicaragua, Mexico, and Kenya. He holds an M.S. in Public Health from the University of California Berkeley, where he wrote an ethnography of changing AIDS stigma in a Kenyan village. From 2006 to 2009 he served as the founding executive director of the Lwala Community Alliance. Joel is interested in the interaction of international health and development policy and global social discourse.
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