Board chair: An enthusiastic supporter of AP’s quilt program, Barbara (Bobbi) is a retired educator who has taught at all levels of education from preschool through graduate school. She has a BA in history from Old Dominion University and an MSED and Ed.D. from the University of Southern California. As a curriculum specialist, she developed training programs for USC in Germany, for the US Navy in Newfoundland, Canada, and a graduate program for the Overseas Federation of Teachers for teachers in the DoD Dependents Schools on three continents. In the US, she has been an associate professor at Lasell College (Newton, MA) and Morris College (Sumter, SC). She was also Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for the North Kingstown, RI school district. As an educational consultant, she worked with a team to improve the national education programs of Pakistan, Egypt, and the UAE. Now retired, Bobbi is an outside evaluator of dissertations and education papers for Pakistan universities and education journals. She is also a docent and children’s program educator at the Cameron Museum of Art in Wilmington, NC. She is an award-winning quilter who has conducted workshops and made presentations about quilting to schools, libraries, educational conferences, and guilds. Since 2010, she has made quilts for the Advocacy Project from Kosovo, Uganda, Palestine, Nepal(3), and Syria.
Board Vice-chair: Karen, a Brazilian national, served as Executive Director at AP between 2018 and 2019, before stepping down to join the AP Board and move back to the UK. Karen graduated from The University of California, Santa Barbara with a BA degree – Major in Global Studies and Minor in History. Her work with The Advocacy Project started in 2015 when she interned as a Development Assistant. As Executive Director of AP Karen’s responsibilities covered administration, fundraising, partnerships, human resources and fellowship program. Karen now lives in the UK where she works in the Private Sector.
Email: kdelaney@advocacynet.org
Stella Makena is the Co-founder and Program Coordinator of Shield of Faith (SOF), an AP partner that seeks to empower vulnerable women in Kenya’s informal settlements. Stella has worked in the public and private sectors for over 25 years, including stints as an IT specialist at the National Cereals and Produce Board in Kenya, a Data Stringer at Thomson Reuters, and a humanitarian worker at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Kenya, Rwanda, Eritrea, and Somalia. Stella has played a decisive role in building a strong partnership between SOF and AP that began in 2019 with embroidery training and continues through Shield of Faith’s trail-blazing project to compost food waste and grow organic food in the Nairobi settlements. She hopes to use her place on the AP Board to present the perspective of AP’s partners in the South and make the case for new innovative community-based initiatives. Stella holds a diploma in IT systems analysis & design and a BSC degree in International Business Administration from the United States International University(USIU)-Africa.
Scott is a private investor and consultant, active in US politics, national security issues and with several non-profit organizations. He is the former US Director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), a Senate confirmed appointment, during the second term of President Obama. For 23 years, he worked in international capital markets at several investment banks in NY, Tokyo and London, leaving his last position as a Managing Director in Credit & Rates at JP Morgan in London in 2004. Prior to his banking career, he spent six years as a merchant seaman. He earned an undergraduate degree from Sophia University in Tokyo in 1978 and a MS in International Business from Georgetown in 1982.
Tom Carver is the CEO of AfricaWorks, a social enterprise developing a platform for African expertise as a key resource for the development community. Having lived in Africa for three years as the BBC’s correspondent, he has maintained contact with the continent as a consultant to international institutions and major corporations.
Tom is a former British Army officer who became one of the BBC’s top foreign reporters, working as the BBC correspondent in Africa, Balkans, London, Russia and Washington. After leaving the BBC, he ran the Washington office of Control Risks, where he advised on reputational, political and operational risk in emerging markets. He built the first ever human rights compliance program for the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
He was hired by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to overhaul their engagement with stakeholders. During his time, he helped to win numerous awards for the organization, including top North American Think Tank, and Think Tank Publication of the Year. Carnegie’s external relations team was ranked #1 out of 6,500 think tanks worldwide.
He has also been a senior vice president at Chlopak, Leonard & Schechter, one of Washington’s leading strategic communications consultancies. Tom is a former board member of VSO, the UK’s Peace Corps. He has a BA Honors in Modern History, and attended the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.
Larry Ingeneri earned a Bachelor’s degree from the US Naval Academy and served on submarines from 1982-1986 before earning an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Between 1988 and 1985, Larry was a Vice President for Corporate Finance at the Salomon Brothers Bank in New York. He then joined the senior management team which restructured Ascom Timeplex. Between 1996 and 2002, Larry served as Chief Financial Officer at the COLT Telecom Group in London, with operations in 13 countries and revenue of $1.5 billion. Between 2003 and 2015 he served as Chief Financial Officer at MindSHIFT Technologies, an IT service provider based in Waltham, Massachusetts. The company was sold to Ricoh Americas Holding Inc in 2014.
Joe Eldridge served as University Chaplain at American University for almost 20 years until his retirement in 2017 and continues as adjunct lecturer in the School of International Service. While at AU he created the Alternative Break program in Campus Life and helped to establish the Social Enterprise Certificate in SIS. Before joining the American University staff, he served as the founding director of the Washington Office of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First). During the mid-1980s he worked for three years in Honduras consulting on human rights and development issues. In 1974 Eldridge co-founded the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), an organization dedicated to promoting human rights and social justice in the Americas and served as its director for 12 years. Prior to that he lived for three years in Chile working for an agency of the United Methodist Church doing community development in a marginalized barrio in Santiago. Eldridge has a MA in International Relations from American University, a MDiv from Perkins School of Theology at SMU, and a DMin from Wesley Theological Seminary. He serves on several boards including the Center for International Policy (CIP), the Advocacy Project and is a Trustee of Santiago College in Chile. Eldridge is married to Maria Otero. They have three children and a granddaughter.
Julia is an international development and humanitarian assistance professional with special interest in championing community-based organizations. She was previously a Humanitarian Assistance Officer at USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance where she supported emergency response efforts for natural disasters and complex crises in Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, and Yemen. Julia blends her approach to development through previous experiences working in public relations and issue advocacy campaigns. As a public relations consultant, she led communication campaign efforts to extend Temporary Protected Status for refugees in the U.S. and elevate the profile of public municipal sanitation workers during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. She holds an MA in International Affairs and International Development from the George Washington University and was a Peace Fellow for the Advocacy Project during the summer of 2022. In her spare time Julia likes to garden, embroider, play video games with her husband, Jack, and spend time with their circus (3 cats and 1 giant dog).
