About Us

Senior Program Manager

Amanda is a youth development activist from Botswana passionate about youth development issues and has a strong background in the civil society sector. Amanda is the Founder of the Gifted Hands Society in Botswana; an NGO focused on providing professional development training and life skills education to high school and university students. Over the past 5 years, Amanda has gained a well-developed understanding of contemporary issues facing young people living in Africa in the areas of health, education and youth unemployment.

Senior Program Associate

Malilomo is an experienced community development professional who is passionate about the worlds development and creating better livelihoods for communities. She has completed her MA in Environment and Society at the University of Pretoria and her undergraduate and honors degree at Monash South Africa. She has professional experience in project coordination focusing on sustainable development, environmental projects, education projects and monitoring & evaluation in the NGO field.

PROGRAM ASSOCIATE

Keneilwe manages our talent pipeline development by executing high impact career opportunities for our students and alumni through actively cultivating partnerships with governance-focused institutions across Africa. She is passionate about defining investments for the youth and believes that education and entrepreneurship are fundamental pillars of economic empowerment. Keneilwe was born in the United States of America and raised in South Africa and is grateful for the opportunity to interact with different cultures and contexts through her work.

Patience Masua is a Namibian politician and lawyer. She serves as a Member of Parliament in the National Assembly, after being appointed by President Hage Geingob in April, 2021, becoming Namibia's youngest Member of Parliament. Previously, she was Secretary General of the Namibia National Students Organization and served in the UNAM SRC as student parliamentary speaker. Patience entered mainstream student politics and activism in university, primarily through her newspaper opinion pieces and then serving in the student union as Faculty Representative for the University of Namibia Faculty of Law. Later she ran for the position of Speaker of Student Parliament of the UNAM SRC and won it in 2019. Thereafter she served as Secretary-General for the Namibia National Students Organisation (NANSO).

Yawa Hansen-Quao is a visionary leader who has spent her career unlocking opportunities for women and youth in Africa. As executive director of Emerging Public Leaders Yawa is working to create better governance in African nations by investing in young people in public service. Yawa knows deeply the impact that a lack of good governance can cause. Her family was forced to flee Ghana to escape the political turmoil brought on by a military coup d’état. Her experience inspires her passion for improved governance, Peacebuildi ng and the deepening of democracy in Africa.

Lord Dr. Michael Hastings of Scarisbrick CBE has appreciated a deeply purposeful career across the public/private & non-profit sectors, working within education, philanthropy, justice and commercial business to support and develop communities around the world. He currently serves as the Chancellor of Regent's University London and as Professor of Leadership at the Stephen R. Covey Leadership Centre at Huntsman Business School, USA & on the Concordia Leadership Council. He is also a Vice President at UNICEF UK and a trustee for the Africa Philanthropy Foundation. Lord Hastings is the former Head of Public Affairs at the BBC and was their first head of Corporate Social Responsibility serving for 12 years.

Esther T. Benjamin has been a global executive in the public, private, and civil society sectors for more than 25 years. Before joining WES as CEO and executive director, Esther worked with Laureate Education, Inc., a leading global higher education organization. Her career includes service in two U.S. Presidential Administrations – as the Associate Director for Global Operations of the U.S. Peace Corps, and previously as a White House Fellow. She was a member of the senior leadership of the International Youth Foundation and the International Partnership for Microbicides. Her private sector experience includes management consulting with Grant Thornton. Early in her career, she worked with the World Bank History Project, and served with the United Nations as a Humanitarian Affairs Officer.

Fatima is a former Malian diplomat, a social entrepreneur and activist for girls’ education and women’s rights. She has served as head of mission at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. She is the founder of Tilwalte Girls Peace Network which empowers girls to be peace ambassadors through entrepreneurship, leadership and peace building trainings and those girls are back to their communities to create different peace building network throughout Mali. In addition to being an alumna of the Oxford Consortium on Human Rights, she was a MasterCard Foundation Scholar and also studied at the African Leadership Academy, Trinity College and Vienna University. She is One Young World and Orange Corners Enterprise for Peace Scholar. Fatima is the youngest 2010 YALI fellow (a fellowship for young African Leaders) Fatima is passionate about writing and her latest article “Feminization of African Politics “got published by Project Syndicate and translated in eight different languages.

Trever Lwere graduated from Notre Dame and is now at Tsinghua University pursuing a Master's Degree in Global Affairs as a member of the Schwarzman Scholar Class of 2023. Trevor worked with Professor Jaimie Bleck in the political science department to study the incentives for civil society organizations to flag corruption in Mali. He also co-authored an introduction article to a special issue of a journal entitled, “The Future of Youth in the Sahel” to be published in the Canadian Journal of African Studies in 2022. Trevor also worked on a senior thesis that is analyzed Africa’s past attempts at development and some of the available alternatives to development on the continent.