OUR TEAM

home > our-team

Erick Ndenga, Regional Director - Africa

Resident in Kenya, Erick is assuming the primary leadership role at Malnutrition Matters. Erick has a strong background in Public Health, Project Management, and a profound commitment to global health equity. He has a Master's degree in Public Health with a focus on the Management of Health Systems and Services, complemented by a Postgraduate Diploma in Project Management and an undergraduate degree in Medical Biotechnology. Mr. Ndenga has focused on advancing participatory, community-based approaches to support Sustainable Development Goals.

As a Rotarian, Erick began as a Rotaractor in University, served as the President of Rotary Club of Kisumu (2016-2018), as Assistant Governor and finally Deputy Chair for Rotary Programs in District 9212 (Kenya, Eritrea, South Sudan and Ethiopia).

Erick has collaborated with prominent organizations such as the Henry Jackson Foundation, Emory University, and the Gates Foundation. Erick’s expertise in stakeholder engagement, relationship building, and partnership development is ensuring the progress of Malnutrition Matters as we transition to African leadership and focus on direct support of Kenyan entrepreneurs to sustainably address malnutrition in Kenya and more broadly in east African communities.

Directors

Peter Akomo - Resident in Kenya, Peter Is an experienced food technology and product development expert with twenty years of involvement in donor-funded grassroots projects and leading-edge food processing, factory design and layouts, and product design and development, with a special focus on ready-to-use foods and fortified blended foods. Peter has direct experience working with food factories on quality management systems and procedures. He is an accomplished researcher and published author on specialist nutrition related to seeking game-changing solutions to hunger and malnutrition in the developing world.

Ariana Constant – is the Director of Community Agribusiness Partners (CAP) in the United Kingdom. CAP is a network of autonomous local non-profit organizations collaborating globally to drive agribusiness development in partnership with farming communities. CAP partners with, and works for, farming cooperatives, unions and associations focused on marketing, finance, production and governance in agriculture business. CAP works to develop a unique, sustainable, ecosystem of production groups linked to financial hubs, marketing cooperatives, business unions and alliances across Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania.

Between 2009 and 2012, Ariana served in the United States Peace Corps as an Agroforestry Extension Agent in Senegal. In 2014, Ariana joined the Clinton Development Initiative, an initiative of the Clinton Foundation, where she worked for a decade. Ariana holds both a B.S. in Natural Resource Policy and Management and a Masters in International Agriculture and Rural Development from Cornell University.
Since 2016, Ariana has served on the Board of Trees for the Future, a non-profit focused on ending poverty and hunger through revitalizing degraded landscapes in Africa. Ariana also serves on Cornell University’s Advisory Committee to the Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Hart Jansson – is past-President of Malnutrition Matters and is supporting Erick Ndenga in his leadership role. Hart is a former executive in telecommunications software (25 years), who also has over 18 years of experience with NGO work, including Child Haven International and the Ottawa Friends of Tibet. In the early 1990’s he helped establish and manage the SoyaCow development project within Child Haven International, a Canadian NGO with childrens' and womens' centres in Nepal and India. The SoyaCow project was co-funded by the former CIDA (Canadian government). Hart has been instrumental in establishing partnerships and managing Malnutrition Matter’s projects in India, Liberia, Ghana and Malawi, among others. He is now focused on supporting Erick Ndenga as Regional Director – Africa, as Malnutrition Matters shifts its focus to direct implementations in Africa, with a focus on Kenya and east Africa.

Betelhem Lakew - Resident in Ethiopia, Ms. Lakew is a professional nutritionist and food scientist, with an MSc in Food Science and Nutrition. Betty is the founder and General Manager of LeHem Nutrition Counseling that provides services to help clients develop healthy eating and achieve their aspiration of leading a healthier lifestyle especially for mothers and children. She is also the confounder and Chief Technology Officer of BeNu, a start- up company seeking to provide nutritional food products to the African market. Betty designs different recipes, manages the technical aspect of the company and also pitches to investors.

Iain MacGillivray, MSC (Ag Economics), Agronomist/Ag Engineer, is a naturalized Canadian who was born and raised in Argentina. His education and experience combine physical and social sciences applied to agriculture, rural development, food security and nutrition within complex institutional environments. His experience includes farm management in Argentina, farming in the Sudan, rural development in the Americas and marketing and consultative work for private and public sectors. At CIDA, his work included program management and scientific, technical and policy advice. Iain represented Canada on the CGIAR, at the FAO, IFAD and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP). More recently he was Special Advisor in Rome to the President of IFAD (2013-2016) focusing on embedding the SDGs and mainstreaming nutrition throughout the institution. He was also Senior Advisor to David Nabarro, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, UN High Level Task Force (HLTF) on Global Food Security and Nutrition. Iain is a strong supporter of food-based approaches to micronutrient malnutrition and of bridging the divide between agriculture, nutrition and health. He is also fluent in Spanish and has working knowledge of French and Portuguese.

Dawn Moncrief – is the founder and president of A Well-Fed World, a global food security, hunger relief, and climate advocacy organization advancing the benefits of plant-based foods and farming. She is a graduate of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership and holds Master’s degrees from The George Washington University in International Relations, and in Women's Studies. For more than two decades, her work has highlighted the ways in which the consumption and production of animal-sourced foods increase economic disparities and exacerbate global hunger, especially for women and girls. Dawn is the Board Chair of ProVeg International and Beyond Carnism, and a Board Director with Physicians Association for Nutrition (PAN) International, and A Just World. She is also a co-chair of the Food and Climate Alliance. Her publications include contributions in: Food Justice: A Primer, The Reducetarian Solution, and Circles of Compassion.

Taylor Quinn – is the Executive Director of Tailored Food; at Tailored Food, female entrepreneurship is a core tenet of their work, building long-term partners with women who are leading food system change in the world's most complex economies. Nutritious, delicious, affordable, local food. These 4 principles guide Taylor’s work across sectors and geographies (20 active countries today) as he works towards the UN Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030, having worked inside UNICEF, the World Food Programme, the World Bank, Save the Children, Mercy Corps, Unilever, and others over the last 8 years. Taylor works in countries like Liberia, Haiti, Somalia, Canada, and the United States to build coalitions of local entrepreneurs, farmers, industrial manufacturers, and multilateral development institutions to design and take-to-market food products for people living in poverty.
Taylor uses his academic background as an anthropologist to build food systems and new routes to market, spending his days everywhere from smoky kitchens to the board rooms from where those that control the biggest actors in the food system make decisions.

Fabio Rappenecker - Resident in Kenya, Fabio is co-founder of TenX Nutrition, a social business that takes a market-based approach to tackling malnutrition in Kenya. TenX works with traditional foods that Kenyans eat every day and fortifies them to contain at least 25% daily requirements in all important micronutrients and protein. Fabio is also cofounder of TechTogether, which brings high-quality, pre-owned IT devices to educational projects in the global south. Among other endeavours, he is the Business Development Lead at The Food Innovation Camp, Germany's leading platform for sustainable food innovation, supporting entrepreneurs in the food and beverage sector.

Professional Associates

Tom Agalo, is an agricultural engineer with seventeen years of experience. He has been doing installations and training with MM in Kenya for VitaGoat and SoyCow projects since 2007. Based in Nairobi and Bungoma, he also operates "Western Appropriate Technology", which involves the promotion of mechanization and agro processing technologies. This includes design, fabrication and adaptation of technologies to suit the needs of farmers. His extension work in agricultural engineering includes: Peanut butter making machines, animal feed grinders, banana ripening chambers, egg incubators, conservation equipment, cassava chippers, and solar dryers.

Rick Chase graduated from Trinity Western University with an MA in Cross Cultural Leadership. Rick’s background includes 15 years in the private sector, 8 years in Church ministry and 4 years in the non-profit sector. He has been living in Yangon, Myanmar (Burma) since 2010 and helped Malnutrition Matters to establish soymilk programs with NGO’s such as GraceWorks, World Concern and local orphanages and non-profit enterprises. He has also established VitaGoat enterprises in India and Thailand. Rick provides business training and consulting services, as well as installation and operational training and support for VitaGoat and SoyCow projects.

Henry Davies has worked closely with MM for many years, on VitaGoat and SoyCow installations and training in most countries in the Southern African region. Based in South Africa, he is a Qualified Millwright and Mechanical Engineer. Henry has also successfully launched and managed his own food and animal feed businesses, as well as the Eden Social Development Foundation, an NGO focussing on improving soy awareness of potential soy farmers and communities, through a specialised mobile on-site training unit.

Don Mercer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Food Science, University of Guelph. He has a Doctorate in Chemical Engineering and is a Registered Professional Engineer. His main area of interest is food process engineering, with particular emphasis on dehydration and drying. Don spent fourteen years in the food industry as Senior Research Engineer with General Foods Canada, and ten years as a Special Advisor on Food and a Commercialization Officer with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

He also has had considerable international experience, having worked on projects in Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Malawi, Tanzania, Honduras, and India. He is currently working with the Distance Education Task Force of the International Union of Food Science and Technology (IUFoST) in the development of training courses for food industry workers in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is also a member of IUFoST's Food Security Task Force. Don has designed and built several prototype solar and forced-air dryers for use in fruit and vegetable drying. He acted as a volunteer consultant to Malnutrition Matters on the optimization of the SolarFlex dryers.