Founder and CEO, ZanaAfrica

For nearly 10 years, Megan has been empowering marginalized groups in Kenya. A graduate of Harvard University, she brings extensive experience in social enterprise, planning and fundraising for non-profits, and development and strategy for businesses. A "next practices" thinker, she not only wants to incorporate best practices into her work, but to find the holes and do things differently to find sometimes more lasting solutions.

Megan first went to Kenya in 1998 to volunteer with street girls through Homeless Children International Kenya (HCI-Kenya) while attending college. In 2001, Megan returned to Kenya to serve as a Resource Mobilization Manager and was charged with developing long-term strategies and exploring self-sustainability opportunities for HCI-Kenya.

In her five years at HCI-Kenya, Megan strengthened her department and grew it to a team of seven people, which oversaw its first strategic plan. She raised $1 million in private donations for local Kenyan programs and businesses, and managed several rural infrastructure projects, including the purchase of land and the construction of two dormitories, a dining hall, a deep well, and a primary school. Her department also oversaw child sponsorship, youth leadership, and volunteering, drawing over 150 local and international professionals annually.

Megan also managed the self-sustainability arm of HCI-Kenya and its five businesses. These five sustainable businesses included a bridal gown rental boutique located in Nairobi called The Sterling Bride, a water business begun in 2004, a guesthouse established in 2005, and a local bakery launched in late 2006. Internship opportunities at these businesses were created for the youth to learn practical and entrepreneurial skills, and a foster care program was established to place children into stable homes over the holidays. Megan herself served as a foster mother to two teenage girl students of HCI-Kenya for nearly a year, one of whom is now a Junior Field Officer with ZanaA and part-time in University studying business management.

While she was founding ZanaAfrica, Megan also worked as a grassroots consultant to communities in Northern Kenya through Northern Rangelands Trust and the Globe Foundation, facilitating strategic plans at the local level for Community Wildlife Conservancies, identifying business opportunities for communities to develop in ways that preserve the best of their culture, and bringing students from Kenya and Purdue University into academic studies of practical and pressing problems.

Board affiliations currently include: the Rotary Club of Nairobi-South (Past President 06-07); the Council of Alumni for Social Enterprise (CASE), an association of Harvard alumni and students committed to social enterprise (Undergraduate Advisory Chair); Sojourners, a non-profit Kenyan film company; and Milele Family Homes, a non-profit helping to address the challenges of AIDS orphans in unconventiona ways.

Megan is a member of the Tae Kwan Do Association of Kenya, and Mavuno Church. She is a Warden for the U.S. Embassy and is proficient in Swahili and French.

Co-Chairwoman

Christina Winters spends her days as a Research & Trading Assistant at Plough Penny Partners, a family run investment firm, in New York City. In the evenings she continues to pursue her creative writing passion as a short fiction writer. Prior to Plough Penny Partners, Christina worked as Assistant Director of Development at the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and as Adjunct at CUNY, Siena College, and the University of Arizona. In 2004 she received her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Fiction, from the University of Arizona. Her thesis consisted of a collection of short stories entitled, The Sound between Them.

In 1998, as a student of Hindu Art, Culture & Language through the School for International Training, Christina pursued her studies in Jaipur, Rajasthan. She graduated with a creative thesis entitled The Uluu Tree, a collection of short stories based on her field work with Puppet Masters, runaway street children, sadhuus, rickshaw walaas, and a professor of Fine Art at the University of Rajasthan.

After graduating with a BA in English from Middlebury College in 1999, Christina’s passion for travel and the sea took her to Egegik and Kodiak, Alaska where she spent two seasons as a commercial fisherman. After traveling and living in the northwestern regions of the United States, Christina moved to Pudong, a suburb of Shanghai, China. There she worked as a freelance writer and later as Marketing Director for one of CB Richard Ellis’s expatriate communities.

Since kindergarten Christina and Megan have been both classmates and friends. It is, therefore, a privilege and exciting opportunity for her to assist in Co-Chairing ZanaAfrica.

Secretary

Todd Fryatt is a corporate attorney for Cohen & Gresser, LLP. His legal ractice represents private companies involved in a variety of businesses, including high technology and investments. Todd provides his clientele with a wide array of services including formations, acquisitions, private placements, contractual relations and general day-to-day matters. His experience includes the preparation and negotiation of various corporate agreements involving licensing, sales, non-disclosure, employment, and consulting.

Todd serves on ZanaAfrica’s Board of Directors as Secretary. He has a life-long passion for international travel and extensive experience in providing pro bono legal and advocacy services to marginalized communities and individuals.

He received his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School where he graduated cum laude and was awarded a school-funded Dean’s Fellowship in the Law School’s Pediatric Advocacy Initiative. Prior to graduating from law school, Todd served as a law clerk to the Honorable Leila R. Kern, Superior Court of Massachusetts. He received his B.A. from Middlebury College and is licensed to practice law in New York State; Massachusetts, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

He is a resident of New York City.

Board Director

Christine Folch is a published cultural anthropologist based in New York whose expertise centers on political and economic development in Latin America and the Third World in the context of globalization, structural inequality, and poverty. A graduate of Harvard College, she has conducted research on the effectiveness of political intervention and economic development models in Central and South America and brings broad experience in top-level analyses and on-the-ground applications of growth strategies.

Christine’s current work at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York is a Ph.D. dissertation on changing democratic governance and the success of economic policy amid new security issues and business opportunities fostered by the impact of globalization at Paraguay’s border with Argentina and Brazil. She has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships to support her research, including a Western Hemisphere Fulbright IIE Fellowship, a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Research Grant, and a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship.

As the daughter of immigrants from Cuba and the Dominican Republic, her interest in addressing social justice needs in Latin America and underdeveloped countries stems from personal as well as academic commitments. She has led teams of Harvard undergraduates on summer volunteer projects to work with local and international NGOs in Guatemala, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic and volunteered her time as a personal mentor and language instructor with at-risk Latino high-school students and their parents with the Higher Education Resource Center in Boston, MA.

Though her research centers on Latin America, she has also studied financial and migration networks between Latin America and Africa and the Middle East. In addition to her work on politics and economics, Christine has published analyses of Latin American popular visual culture, cuisine, and racial/ethnic identity.
Christine lives in New York City, and travels extensively to Central and South America. She is fluent in Spanish and proficient in Portuguese. She attends All Angels’ Church in Manhattan.

Board Director
PhD student, Harvard University Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology


Dino J. Martins, an environmentalist and biologist, is currently a PhD student in entomology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. A respected researcher and writer, he has published numerous articles in scientific, natural history, and environmental magazines including: International Journal of Tropical Insect Science, Nature East Africa, the East Africa Natural History Society Bulletin, Swara, Nature Net, Ecoforum, and the Journal of the East African Wildlife Society.

He was editor of Naturalist's Corner, for East Africa Natural History Society, and researched and wrote the ecology, biodiversity and conservation sections to guidebooks for the National Parks of Kenya for the Kenya Wildlife Society. He is current the Chair, Insect Committee, East African Natural History Society.

An artist, he illustrated pocket guides and recently completed illustrations for postal stamps for the 100th anniversary of Nature Kenya, the East Africa Natural History Society.

Dino's current research is on the co-evolution of ant-acacia interactions and diversification. He has most recently also researched the pollination ecology of Saintpaulia and Streptocarpus spp. (Family;

Gesneriaceae) and the evolution and ecology of hawkmoth pollination guilds in East Africa.

He has had managerial and coordination roles in the development of field site visits for the Eco-Agriculture Initiative global partners meeting at the World Agro-forestry Centre, for the Kenya National Project Committee of UNEP-GEF, FAO on Conservation and Management of Pollinators, the African Pollinator Initiative at ELCI, and as a docent and guide, Kitale Museum, Kenya in planning and development of displays, guiding school groups and other visitors.

He has worked with the UN FAO-GEF in pollination programmes on coffee (Ethiopia), vanilla (Uganda), Pigeon pea (Tanzania) and Papaya (Kenya) as well as rapid assessment studies of principal crop pollinators in Ghana and South Africa; as a research writer for UNEP and Civil Society relations policy guidebook; with ICIPE-GEF on traditional uses of grasses and the role of grasses in agro-ecology, invasive species control in Nairobi National Park; as a researcher on ACT Rondonia (Brazilian Amazon) project (vegetation profiles and household interviews); a researcher at ACT- Anthropological Centre for Research and Training in Global Environmental Change, Bloomington, Indiana; and, researcher on the Japanese Macaque Project AZA-IUPUI.

Dino has taught courses at Harvard University as a teaching fellow and field courses for Georgetown, as well as in High Schools in Eldoret and Kakamega, Kenya. He has lead trips for the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Kenya Museum Society.

Amongst his awards and fellowships are the Ashford Fellowship in the Natural Sciences, GSAS, Harvard University, 2004 Smithsonian Institution SIWC – MRC Fellowship, and 2002 & 2003 Peter Jenkins Award for Excellence in African Environmental Journalism.

Dino holds an MSc Botany, School of Biological and Conservation Sciences, University of Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa, and a BA Anthropology (with distinction), Indiana University.

Dino was born in Israel and is a Kenyan citizen. He is fluent in English and Kiswahili and conversant in Portugese, Maasai, and French.

Passionate about justice as well as the environment, he is eager to see the environment play a central role in being sustainably managed to provide materials necessary to keep girls in school. Linking environmental issues with core human socio-economic projects is one of his key goals towards a sustainable future.