Board of Directors

Founder & Chair of the Board
Rebecca Mitchell founded SpanAfrica in 2005 after volunteering at an orphanage and HIV/AIDS clinic in Kenya. Her dream was to create a more personal and effective method for supporting social entrepreneurship and grassroots development in Africa. She is an honors graduate from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and is currently a medical student at the University of California-San Francisco, where she is an advocate for health system reform and an overhaul of intellectual property policy and university licensing to increase global access to essential medicines. In recent years she received the Harry Truman Scholarship for public service and a Fulbright Fellowship for research on humanitarian aid in India, and was named a Glamour Top Ten College Woman and to the USA Today All-Academic First Team.

Board Member & Director of African Operations
Cameron Dunkin has spent extensive time in Kenya over the past three years teaching and completing agricultural, marketing, and medical projects for various SpanAfrica placements, including the development of three libraries. Recently he assisted SpanAfrica Regional Director for Kenya Amos Otieno in co-founding Baobab Branch Educational Programmes, an NGO designed to provide holistic and vocational education services to youth and young adults who have no other access to them. Cameron has a degree in Political Studies from Queens University, and has worked under Right Honorable Herb Gray in the International Joint Commission, and at the microfinance NGO Opportunity International Canada. Cameron recently served as SpanAfrica’s first full-time staff member during the spring of 2009, and is currently living and furthering his studies in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Board Member & Legal Advisor
Brad Beherns graduated with a B.A. in political science from the University of Minnesota in 2005, where he was active in various community organizations. He tutored English to recent immigrants and refugees with the Minnesota Literacy Council and FIRE before spending extensive time in Asia traveling. Upon returning, he began working with The Center for Victims of Torture, speaking to the public about the issues of interrogation and how to ease the acclimation of torture victims into the Minneapolis/St. Paul community. He interned with the Amy Klobuchar’s U.S. Senate campaign and is currently a law student at Case Western University in San Diego.

  
Board Member& System Architect
Kai Staats graduated from the College of Architecture, School of Industrial Design, ASU in 1993. In 1995 Kai ventured to rural Poland where he designed and managed the construction of a 2,000 sq-ft playground for the children of Salmopolska. In 2001 Kai rebuilt a high school computer lab in northern Namibia, Africa. In August 2007, May 2008, and July 2009 Kai volunteered through SpanAfrica in Kenya, Africa. Kai is now the Principal of Over the Sun, LLC , developer of a powerful new kind of social networking software for a digital world. Kai brings to SpanAfrica a decade of experience in web-based technologies for the management of communications, data, contacts, and projects to assist Directors, Volunteers, and Grassroots Partner Organizations.

Board Member & Regional Director in Kenya
Amos Otieno Ahenda is an experienced educator and trainer who has worked with different education- based organizations. A Bachelor of Science graduate of the University of Nairobi, Amos has also taken various courses in education and human capital development. He has great experience in rehabilitation of street children and designing alternative education to disadvantaged youth. He has held various administrative positions in educational institutions, the latest being Deputy Principal and Head of Human Resources Department of Nakuru College of Health Sciences and Management. He left this institution to help found Baobab Branch Educational Programmes, a registered NGO dealing with education and capacity-building programmes for holistic development of various cadres of young people. He currently also works as the Director of Baobab Branch Educational Programmes.

Board Member & General Advisor
Cindy Sarai is the founder and Executive director for Adoption Dreams Come True Inc., a Fort Collins, Colorado based not-for-profit adoption agency. She has been involved with domestic and international children in helping them to find a safe and permanent home through either resource allocation or adoption.

Cindy lends her many years experience in fund raising and management of a not-for-profit to the Board of SpanAfrica.

Board Member & Director of Marketing
Grace Proctor lived and worked in Kenya for six months as a volunteer for both Red Cross and SpanAfrica in 2009. Upon return to the United States, she became more involved with SpanAfrica's leadership team and in January of 2010, joined the Board of Directors to help guide and grow Span's web presence.