Our Board

Ingrid Schulze

Founder and Board Member

Dr. Ingrid Schulze immigrated to the United States as a baby with her German parents, who arrived with virtually nothing except her father’s PhD in chemistry and his job offer. The power of education made a lifelong impression on her and influenced her decision to start Congo Education Partners. She grew up in a house full of books and has a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Texas. Ingrid first met Albert Lokasola, founder of Djolu Technical College (DTC), in 2005 and started the Kokolopori-Falls Church Sister City Partnership soon thereafter, which she led until 2011. The Kokolopori Partnership played a crucial role in the DR Congo government’s accreditation of DTC and its official recognition of the Kokolopori Bonobo Nature Reserve. In 2013, Ingrid founded Congo Education Partners expressly to fund the College. CEP and Albert Lokasola’s NGO, Vie Sauvage, have worked together on developing DTC ever since. Ingrid loves her family and the great outdoors, especially biking and lake swimming, and is writing a science fiction novel.

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Jessica Leas

Board member

Jessica Leas (she/her) is currently the Senior Director for Large Grant Capacity at Conservation International, where she works directly with field staff to develop large project proposals. Over her 25-year career, Jessica has raised and stewarded more than US$1 billion for efforts at various environmental organizations such as ClimateWorks Foundation, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and Defenders of Wildlife. Jessica has done program work in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Sri Lanka and India and was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan. Jessica has a master’s degree in environmental science and policy from Johns Hopkins University. She comes to CEP with a great appreciation for the Congo rainforest and is helping to grow CEP’s donor base and engage new institutional donors. When Jessica is not fundraising for CI and CEP, she can be found wandering Washington DC with her dog, biking to and from errands (she lives car-free!), growing weeds at her community garden plot or just reading a good book.

Jill Punches

Vice-Chair

​Jill Punches (she/her) has supported Congo Education Partners for years. She  understands the importance of local higher education and its role in protecting the Congo rainforest and its wildlife. A passionate birder, she approached CEP about developing a birding program to provide opportunities for DTC students to apply their classroom skills in the field, and to increase the amount of bird research in the heart of the Congo Basin.
Jill has a BA in Economics with a certificate in International Commerce from Kalamazoo College, and a MS in Financial Analysis from Portland State University. She has a strong administrative background working for universities and in the public sector. When not traveling, Jill brings the world to her; she has helped resettle refugees and hosted more than 70 students and teachers from around the world, including seven countries in Africa.

John Ulimwengu

Board Member

John is passionate about agricultural development across Africa and strongly believes that education is one of the needed pillars to make that happen. He is a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (https://www.ifpri.org/profile/john-ulimwengu), with a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Ohio State University (USA). Since 2007, John has been involved in strategic research on the transformation of the agricultural sector in Africa under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) agenda. Due to his many years working on global and local development issues in the agricultural sector, John brings a wealth of knowledge and institutional and human networks that can support CEP’s mission. When he’s not out trying to save people from starvation, John is busy studying the Bible and sharing his thoughts on key development issues in various publications. He also prides himself on mentoring young African scholars. His latest mentee just defended her PhD dissertation in Economics at Tufts University (Boston, USA).
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Lys Alcayna-Stevens ​

Board Member

Dr. Lys Alcayna-Stevens is a cultural anthropologist who has spent the last 10 years conducting research on environmental and health issues in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including research for UNICEF in the immediate aftermath of the 2018 Ebola outbreak. In 2013 and 2014, she spent over a year living with communities in the villages around Djolu Technical College (ISDR) and has witnessed first-hand how the college contributes to the realization of rural Congolese people’s dreams and aspirations. Lys is fluent in the regional lingua franca of Lingala and speaks Longando (the native language of the Bongando people living around Djolu) to a conversational level. She received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 2016 and is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard University. She loves degrowth activism, riding her bike, and baking sourdough bread.

Mellen Duffy Tanamly

Board member

Mellen Duffy Tanamly knew from childhood she wanted to teach people to cook and eat healthfully. She became a public health nutritionist and has worked in over 60 countries in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Asia. She has an amazing textile collection from many of these countries and recently exhibited some of them.  She is active in her local community and globally promoting girls and women’s equality and empowerment through education and working in maternal and child health, nutrition and food security programs. Mellen joined the CEP board because she believes that education is fundamental to development in Africa, and the application of science and technology are key to protecting biodiversity and making agriculture sustainable.  She believes that CEP and Djolu Technical College have a critical role to play in increasing health and livelihoods that benefit both nature and local communities in the Congo Rainforest. 
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Nancy Tumavick

Board Member

With a freshly minted MA in development economics, at the age of 23, Nancy boarded a PanAm flight for Bangkok and never looked back. She has dedicated herself to improving the lives of millions of people living in the developing world, whether through creative programs in education, health and agriculture or major policy changes in environmental regulations, subsidies, and poverty alleviation. As a Foreign Service Officer, she lived and worked in Thailand, Liberia, Indonesia, Tunisia and Pakistan. Working with CEP offers her the opportunity to support one of the important development principles she learned over the last 50 years. For institutions to succeed, they need to reflect the needs and desires of the local communities which they serve. Nancy continues to be active in her professional network serving on the Executive Committee of the USAID Alumni Association. She and her husband reside in McLean, Virginia where she thrives on weekly playdates with her five-year-old and one-year-old granddaughters. 

Rick Leone

Board Treasurer

Rick is an outdoor enthusiast and animal lover which drove him to obtain degrees in Environmental Science and Zoology.  He has spent his career in the private sector, starting with an employee-owned engineering consulting company that grew into the largest publicly traded global design consulting firm.  He is inspired by his mother, the first female college graduate in her family who had a lifelong dream of becoming an engineer, a career that was inaccessible to women during her time. Building on experiences gained from his mother and his own career, he developed a personal mission to provide opportunity and mentoring to historically underrepresented populations in the STEM professions, particularly women.  He established a scholarship at Djolu to honor his mother and now helps CEP with its business operations and fiscal compliance. He lives in North Carolina and routinely travels back to his ecological roots hiking, rafting, and 4-wheeling along the Colorado Plateau.       
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Steve Mahaley

Board Member

Steve is an educator and creator, and has taught children, teens and adults throughout his career.  He is an investigator and entrepreneur at the intersection of learning and technology, and has spent 30 years developing new ways for students to engage in learning.  He spent nearly 20 years in executive education and traveled and lived abroad, designing and delivering educational programs, while leading design and technology groups.  During that time, he realized a long-time dream to visit some countries in Africa, only enhancing his interest in learning more about cultures and how education happens on the African continent.  He is a closet nerd and a serial DIYer, preferring to build things himself, when he can.  When not working with CEP, Steve designs and produces virtual reality immersions for corporate and non-profit clients, largely focused on improving human understanding - particularly for the marginalized.  He and his wife have two grown children, and love to take trips in their camper.

Yolande Munzimi

Board Member

Dr. Yolande Munzimi is a scientist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), who specializes in Water Resources, in particular in the waters of  the Congo Basin. She received her PhD in Geographical Sciences from the University of Maryland where she is a post-doctoral associate working for the USAID CARPE program. She is also a consultant at the World Bank in the Environment Sector and an instructor at the University of Kinshasa. Yolande has previously worked in the Congo rainforest with Congo Basin Forest Partnership conservation NGOs such as OSFAC, WWF and AWF. As their representative, she has carried out biological inventories and socio-economic surveys in protected areas such as Salonga National Park and Okapi Wildlife Reserve. Yolande has an unwavering commitment to the Congo Basin’s natural resources, biodiversity and welfare of its local communities. As such, she is honored to be part of the CEP board.​

Advisors

Janet Nackoney

Advisor

Dr. Janet Nackoney is a geographer who uses participatory approaches to promote equitable access to land and resources, strengthen land governance, and sustain local livelihoods and environmental health by protecting biodiverse ecosystems. She loves working with maps and geospatial data and technology and using them to help strengthen decision-making around natural resources and forest conservation in the tropics. Janet has visited Djolu Technical College on several occasions while conducting her Ph.D. research in the vicinity and has volunteered with CEP since it began in 2013. She is excited to help Djolu Technical College and assist with fundraising efforts. In her free time, Janet loves hiking, exploring bike trails in Maryland and DC, playing in her clarinet quartet, and volunteering with her City's Environmental Committee. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Society for Conservation GIS (SCGIS). 

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Pappy Orion

Advisor

At an early age, Pappy fled to South Africa after finding himself a primary target of recruitment as a child soldier in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He walked for two and half years through national parks, crocodile infested rivers and electric fenced borders. Pappy studied Communication and Media with the University of the Nations in eight countries on three different continents, while pursuing his Master’s Degree in Mass Media with a focus on filmmaking. Traveling to different countries and meeting people from different nations and cultural backgrounds is what inspired his desire to authentically deliver people’s stories, always striving to present every person with the same respect and love he had for himself when in similar situations. Pappy portrays people as who they truly are, giving them ownership and control over their story. Pappy is dedicated to helping CEP communicate hope while creating awareness about the dangers faced by the Congo Basin rainforest and the people that live there. 

Diane Russell
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Advisor
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​Diane Russell is an environmental anthropologist with forty years’ experience in the human dimensions of biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and agricultural systems. Her main focus is the Congo Basin, notably the Democratic Republic of Congo, but she has lived and worked across Africa and in Asia-Pacific. Diane holds a PhD in anthropology from Boston University and a Master’s in Environmental Management from Yale School of the Environment. 

Paul Cough

Advisor

Paul is an environmental expert who advises governments and nonprofit organizations on how to protect coastal water quality and on carbon accounting for coastal habitats. He formerly directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Oceans & Coastal Protection Division and its Office of International Environmental Policy. Earlier in his career, he worked for more than five years on energy and forestry projects in Sudan, Kenya, Lesotho, Pakistan, and Haiti. He lives in North Carolina and is an avid musician.
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Sara Gomez

Advisor

Sara is an artist and a storyteller with a masters in Maternal and Child Health who has lived and worked all over the world. She has spent more than 20 years advocating for the rights of vulnerable populations including women and migrant farmworkers from India to Mexico to the US. Her passion is using creative and participatory strategies to eradicate health inequalities while lifting up the voices of marginalized communities. Sara helps CEP tell the powerful stories behind its work, providing ongoing communications support since 2020. She currently lives in Lecce, Italy with her husband and daughter and spends her free time exploring the beauty of the nooks and crannies of the world around her.
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Renée A. Price

Advisor

Renée is a Member of the House of Representatives, for District 50, in the North Carolina General Assembly, having taken the oath of office in January 2023. Previously, from 2012 to 2022, she served on the Orange County Board of County Commissioners. In addition, Renée maintains a position as a Board Member of the North Carolina Black Alliance. Throughout her career, Renée has focused on urban and rural community development, along with natural and cultural resource preservation and conservation. Her background includes: inner-city neighborhood housing director, environmental impact assistant project manager, grant writer for a Black land loss pro-bono law firm, conservation council coordinator, sustainable forestry program director for underserved landowners, and government relations manager for a mentoring program. Renée also co-founded Spirit Freedom, a non-profit that tells the history of Orange County through the lens of people of color, and to build bridges of cross-cultural understanding through the arts. Renée earned her Bachelor of Arts from Tufts University, and Master of Regional Planning from Cornell University.