Snea Thinsan
Snea is currently serving as the English Language Program Manager and Distance Education Coordinator for The Higher Education Project (Afghanistan), based at the Center of Social Studies and International Education. He is a doctoral candidate in language education and he minors in Instructional Systems Technology. He has been one of the Nyaka School webmasters since 2003.

Read more about Snea at http://thinsan.org.

Aimé Wata - Director (2004 - 2007)
Aimé Wata is from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is a lawyer by training from the University of Kinshasa (1982-1988) and attended the 1996 Columbia University and 2002 Geneva University Human Rights Programs.

Mr. Wata worked as judge in Kivu Province from 1989 to 1997 in the country that was then recognized as Zaire. He worked also for various NGOs at the grassroots level and later for international agencies including the International Committee of the Red Cross (1997-1998), Amnesty International (1999) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, 2000-2001).

Mr.Wata holds a Masters of Advanced Studies in Children rights (IUKB/Sion and Fribourg University in Switzerland) and is a PhD Candidate in international children protection (Fribourg University). He also does field missions for the UNHCR as Protection Officer in refugee camps.

Mr. Wata lives in Geneva Switzerland. He has written two novels (both in French) and runs marathons, including the New York City Marathon he completed in 2002.

Matthew Fulakeza, Ph.D. - Advisor
Dr. Matthew Fulakeza, a native of Malawi, graduated from Florida State University with a Ph.D. in Meteorology. He is an expert in the area of regional climate modeling, with special focus on African regions. Dr. Fulakeza’s work includes studying the interaction between land surface (particularly soil moisture) and atmosphere, which leads to the understanding of mechanisms of climate variability and predictions. He has published his research findings in several peer-reviewed research publications.

Dr. Fulakeza received a 2-year National Research Council Award in 1998 to work as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at NASA/GISS in New York City. Currently he is working on West African and Southern African weather systems at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University in New York.

Dr. Fulakeza is interested in both the scientific component of STSAD, Inc. and it’s educational project of helping HIV/AIDS orphans around the world beginning with those countries that are most highly affected.

Dale Val, Ph.D. - Advisor
Dale is a native of Australia, currently living in Northern California. A dedicated fundraiser for the Nyaka School, Dale was in attendance at the opening ceremony and helped ! prepare the foundation for the second set of classes on site. As an elder and leader of the Pathfinders at Woodland Adventist Church, Dale is dedicated to working with youth in the United States and abroad.

René Montgomery
Ms. Montgomery resides in Little Rock, Arkansas and graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration from Henderson State University of Arkansas. She currently serves at the Community Education Director for a local hospital in the Greater Little Rock metro area were she oversees the hospital’s community relation and physician’s referral program. She also holds program certificates in the areas of Professionals in American Healthcare Management and the Council for Organizational Continuous Quality Improvement.

Ms. Montgomery has worked in the field of managed care and health services administration for several years and has over 10 years experience working with nonprofit organizations in various areas of policy development, contractual development and implementation, community education, provider relations, and compliance reporting to state and federal entities. She is currently an active member of several healthcare organizations and committees including the SMH Community Relations Development Council and the American Society of Minority Health Care Services & Procurement Professionals. Her community involvement has included being a program advisor for an after school tutoring program and also being a volunteer and trainer for an adult literacy program. It is through her affiliations with nonprofit, community-based volunteer programs that she understands the positive impact community involvement can have when individuals choose to give of themselves for the purpose of positively impacting social causes.

Emma Mugisha
Emma Mugisha is currently the Chair of the Board of Advisors. She is proud to be volunteering for Nyaka. She grew up in a home where she met the HIV/AIDS challenge early in life when several of her uncles and aunts passed away from the disease. Her parents had 5 children of their own but have brought up more than 15 children as a result. Learning to share the available living space and resources, and seeing her parents' sacrifice inspired her to contribute and help ease the suffering of many children in Uganda affected by the scourge of HIV/AIDS.

Emma currently works with Barclays Bank in Uganda as the Country Treasurer. In August of 2007, Emmas a finalist at the prestigious Barclays Chairman's Awards due to her work with the Nyaka AIDS Foundation.

Emma holds a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work and Social Administration (Makerere University), and an MBA from Rotterdam School of Management/Erasmus Graduate School of Business, the Netherlands. Emma has also gone through the Barclays Leadership For the Cutting Edge Programme at Gibbs University in Johannesburg.