Peace + Prosperity: Youth Seizing the Future
Speakers
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Co-Founder, COBURWAS International Youth Organization to Transform Africa
A 25-year-old from the D.R. Congo fled from his home country to Uganda at the age of six due to conflict. With his friends, Munyambanza co-founded the organization COBURWAS International Youth Organization to Transform Africa (CIYOTA) at age 14 to educate refugee youth from Congo, Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, and Sudan. Munyambanza excelled in his studies in the refugee camp in Uganda and graduated from the African Leadership Academy in 2010. He is a member of the British Council Global Changemaker network and a fellow at the African Leadership Network. Munyambanza is one of 15 young people chosen to serve as advisors on international education to the UN Secretary General. He graduated in biochemistry at Westminster College a MasterCard Foundation Scholar. He is the force behind different new initiatives in innovative education to empower young leaders in the Congo and Uganda. He was recognized along with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia as one of four Global Citizen Award winners of 2013. He was recognized named one of The 99 most influential Foreign Policy Leaders under the age of 33 by the Diplomatic Courier magazine. Munyambanza also awarded the Trailblazer Award by the African Leadership Academy in 2014
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Co-Founder & Country Manager, Pluspeople Kenya Limited
"Angela has a background in business and information technology from Strathmore University in Kenya. She is currently the Co-founder and Country Manager of Pluspeople Kenya/ Uhasibu, an IT company that has been recognized and awarded for its focus on empowering SMEs in East Africa by offering them IT solutions to manage their businesses more professionally.
Prior to Pluspeople, Angela co-founded Metro-Mobile a software development company that gave students a detailed summary of their university’s e-learning systems and co-curricular activities on their mobile phones. She is passionate about technology, small businesses in East Africa and the start-up scene in Sub- Saharan Africa. Angela is a strong advocate for mentorship, a champion for women in technology and volunteers in various mentoring programs in Kenya; one that focuses on mentoring young under-served girls, another for mid-level career women and another for older less privileged micro-business women owners.
For her leadership and social entrepreneurship work with Pluspeople Kenya and as an individual, Angela has been recognized as a Zambezi Prize Finalist presented by the Legatum Center at MIT and the MasterCard Foundation; She is a 2016 Skoll World Forum Young Leader; a 2016 Mandela Washington Fellow as part of President Barack Obama's Young Leaders Initiative (YALI); and a finalist of the McKinsey Next Generation Women Leaders award."
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Executive Director, Fundacion Mi Sangre
Catalina an accomplished social entrepreneur and global weaver, is the co-founder and President of Mi Sangre, an organization that facilitates systemic change, engaging all actors of the ecosystem, including schools, NGOs, governments and communities, weaving them together to align visions, encourage collaboration, and empower the next generation to lead the construction of a peace culture. Mi Sangre has impacted more than 2 million young people in Colombia equipping them as co-creators of transformative solutions at the community and policy level. Catalina is also co-founder of the Weaving Lab, a community of weavers learning together how to interconnect people, projects and places to form thriving systems. As founder and CEO of Amichoco, Catalina led the creation of the first social and environmental certification of artisanal gold mining and its replica in more than 10 countries. Catalina as an Ashoka fellow, YGL(WEF) Obama Civic Leader, Synergos fellow.
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Co-Founder, Gaza Sky Geeks / Mercy Corps
Iliana Montauk is the former director of Gaza Sky Geeks, the first startup accelerator in Gaza, launched in 2011 by the global humanitarian organization Mercy Corps. Gaza Sky Geeks fills a critical need in Gaza, where young tech talent is abundant but opportunities are in short supply. Initially, the Mercy Corps program provided technology entrepreneurship training and competitions. Over the last year, the program has ramped up its efforts as a full-blown startup accelerator, bringing in the first private international investment to Gazan startups, and providing valuable mentorship opportunities for startup founders, particularly women.
Montauk’s interest in harnessing tech entrepreneurship for development in conflict areas arose from her past experience at Google, Monitor Group (now part of Deloitte Consulting), a microfinance organization, and Wamda, the TechCrunch of the Middle East.
She graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 2006 with a degree in history and literature of France and the Middle East and completed a Fulbright in Jordan in 2012 on startups as a type of social innovation. Originally from Poland and the San Francisco Bay Area, Montauk speaks five languages, including Arabic.
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Vice President, Education, Creativity and Free Expression, Ford Foundation
Hilary Pennington is vice president of the Ford Foundation’s Education, Creativity and Free Expression program. She leads the foundation’s work on school reform in the United States and higher education around the world, next-generation media policy and journalism, and support for arts and culture. She also oversees regional programming in four offices based in Africa and the Middle East. Pennington is a national expert on postsecondary education and intergenerational change, and she has worked with the Next American University project of the New America Foundation and Arizona State University. Before joining Ford, she was director of education, postsecondary success and special initiatives at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to that, she was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the CEO of Jobs for the Future.
