Co-Founder and Board Member

Eric was born and raised in Kenya, with a Kenyan mother and a Ugandan father he considers himself an East African. Eric completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from Monash University in South Africa in 2008. Prior to KadAfrica, Eric worked in marketing for four years, representing clients such as Air Uganda, Shoprite Supermarkets, British High Commission, Sadolin, and Stanbic Bank. In late 2012, he moved to Fort Portal, Uganda where he founded KadAfrica. Eric cannot imagine ever going back to work in advertising, and instead employs his marketing skills to the sale of passion fruit. Eric has secured contracts with Sheraton Hotels, Uchumi and Nakumatt Supermarkets, and most recently an export deal to the United Kingdom where you can now taste KadAfrica passion fruit in supermarkets in London. Eric is Africa’s youngest ever winner of the Yara Prize for his transformative work towards a Green Revolution Africa. He is a 2015 Acumen East Africa Fellow and 2014 Unreasonable
Fellow.

Board Member

For the past 25 years, Lynne Anderson has owned and operated a successful consultancy in environmental health, safety and sustainability management. Her expertise is in helping industrial clients with strategic environmental analysis, sustainability, compliance, and environmental health and safety project management. Prior to owning her own business, Lynne worked as an environmental health and safety professional for a variety of industries including aerospace, steel, and electronics.

Lynne joined Miller Center in 2018 as the Mentor Network Director, bringing her management systems expertise to expand and improve the mentoring process and experience. Lynne holds a Master's of Public Health from the University of California at Berkeley, and an joint executive MBA from Haas School of Business and Columbia University.

Board Member

Rebecca Calder is a gender and social policy specialist. She has a PhD in social anthropology and nearly thirty years of policy and field experience researching, designing, implementing, and evaluating development programs that aim to achieve positive social impact for the world's poorest and most excluded populations in Asia, Africa and the Pacific. Her client partners include UNICEF, DFID, DFAT, Australian Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Irish Aid, USAID, PSI, Mercy Corps, Plan, ActionAid, Comic Relief, ODI, Stanford, Hewlett Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Girl Hub, Nike Foundation, Girl Effect, the Unreasonable Group, and Women Moving Millions. Rebecca's is particularly passionate about working with adolescent girls and young women, and on economic empowerment, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and social norms. She lives in Vancouver, Canada, with her husband, two teenage children, and a menagerie of animals.

Managing Director, KadAfrica

In 2012 Rebecca co-Founded KadAfrica. Under her leadership, KadAfrica has grown from a backyard farming project to an out grower network of more than 2,000 girls and 10,000 community members growing passion fruit in the Western Region of Uganda. Before joining KadAfrica full time, Rebecca served as the Director of Public Affairs Research at Ipsos Uganda. She has more than 10 years of experience leading the development of teams and partnerships at various social enterprises and non-profits, including management roles at D-Rev and Educate!. Rebecca is a certified Project Manager who brings her program development and monitoring and evaluation skills to KadAfrica to ensure a maximization of resources for effectiveness of outcomes. She has a B.S. in Political Science from Santa Clara University and a M.A. in Political Science from The American University in Cairo.

Rebecca represented KadAfrica at the 2017 Global Social Benefit Incubator, 2015 SPRING Accelerator, and is a 2014 Unreasonable Fellow.

Board Member

Rich Hoops began his 14-year career in the personal computer industry in 1986 with Tandy Corporation. In early 1989, he was recruited to Austin, Texas to join Dell Computer Corporation embarking on an exciting 11 year career with Dell where he held a variety of senior management and executive positions in sales, marketing and business development
contributing to Dell's ascent from a small direct marketing company to one of the world's largest and most successful PC Company. After leaving, Dell in 2000, Rich founded, and served as CEO of Outdoor Intelligence, a startup focused on delivering digital map information and data to the recreational fishing industry. In the fall of 2001, while still running his new company, Rich became involved with Social Venture Partners, a nonprofit organization whose partners invest both time and money in the development of small, innovative area nonprofits. After transitioning out of his start-up in 2002, Rich has dedicated more and more of his time towards assisting area nonprofits in building operational/organizational capacity through strategic consulting and general business coaching. Rich continues to serve on the Board of SVP where he served as Board Chair from 2004-2006. Rich has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia and an MBA from the University of Chicago with an emphasis on Entrepreneurship and Organizational Strategy. He and his wife, Traci, have four daughters and live in Boulder, CO.

Board Member KadAfrica NGO

Yasmina Zaidman is the Chief Partnerships Officer at Acumen, an organization working to change the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies, leaders and ideas. She leads its work to engage with strategic corporate partners and institutions that share Acumen’s commitment to supporting entrepreneurial approaches to tackling poverty. Previously, Ms. Zaidman initiated and managed the Water Portfolio at Acumen, where she invested in start-up water and sanitation enterprises in India and East Africa that have brought safe drinking water to over seven million people. She led Acumen’s Communications work for six years, helping to position Acumen’s unique approach as a pioneering new model featured in Time, Forbes, Fortune, The Economist, The NYT and across broadcast media. Before joining Acumen, Ms. Zaidman worked with Ashoka to support its environmental innovators across the globe.

Ms. Zaidman has worked in the arenas of international development, corporate sustainability and social entrepreneurship for over twenty years. She is on the board of the White Ribbon Alliance, an organization that supports advocacy for safe and respectful birth for women around the world. She received a BA from Vassar College and her MBA from Stanford’s GSB with a certificate in Public Management.