Team
We are a small team of mission-driven professionals with one common thread that binds us - EDUCATION at the core of development. We love what we do, and we do it with passion. We look forward to working with you.
Leah Katerberg
President, Founder
Leah Katerberg has been working in international development for over 15 years. Her work has taken her to many countries around the globe where she has witnessed heartbreaking conditions, and at the same time incredible hope exhibited by people who work hard and have dreams. Her own dream is to see disadvantaged kids have the same opportunities to grow and thrive as her own kids.
Tim Katerberg
Director, Founder
Tim Katerberg is a small business owner with a passion for Tanzania. Having lived there for a number of years with his wife, Leah, and their three children, he mentored small business owners to build smart, profitable businesses that can succeed in a challenging economy. His favourite past-time there was spending time with the locals at the piki-piki (motorcycle) shop.
Nikesh Ghimire
Treasurer, Founder
Nikesh Ghimire started his career in 2003 with Redd Barna, where he worked with children in Early Childhood Development and learned how proper education can either make or break (lack of it) a child’s future. He worked in the Banking sector for over a decade, and then returned to the development industry in 2017, with special focus in East Africa.
Dennis Tessier
Director, Founder
Dennis Tessier is an entrepreneur who has worked in international development for the past 15 years focusing on poverty and resource management and clean technology. From 2006 to 2009 Dennis worked with KidzCare Tanzania helping the organization with capacity building. Dennis later moved on to establish a non-profit and 2 successful companies focused on clean energy in East Africa.
Vivian Polak
Director
Vivian Polak travelled in her teens and 20s to learn languages and to work in business and the travel industry, being especially shaped by her time in developing countries (Latin America, eastern Europe). A psychiatrist, she delights in seeing others reach their full potential – whether in her patients finding themselves after a bout of depression in pregnancy or postpartum, or in children getting the education that can lift them out of poverty and able to meet their own life goals.
Judith Lyander
Director
Judith Lyander, a retired Ontario high school teacher and school board administrator, left her career early to get a PhD in Education so that she could make a difference in Tanzania, the country where she was born. We will build on the progress and connections she has already made within Tanzania and aim to establish partnerships to help us ‘move the needle’ on the entire education system in Tanzania.