Our Board of Directors
DAVID NEWMAN - PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER
David Newman is the founder of The Rafiki Village Project. He is a family nurse practitioner and owner of Health Plus. He is married to board member Laura Orgel. They have three adult children, Jennifer, Seth and Tamah. David is passionate about social and economic justice, Human rights, universal health care, literacy promotion, and environmental protection. He has traveled extensively in the developing world. |
LAURA ORGEL - SECRETARY
Laura Orgel, Ph.D., has worked with children her whole life. First as an educator and later as a psychologist, her work with disadvantaged children and families has helped her understand the impact of generational poverty on learning and development. In addition to being a Rafiki Village Project board member, Laura is a local Clinical Director for A Home Within, which connects foster youth to therapists who can see them long-term at no charge. |
TOM ACHOR - TREASURER
Tom is a consultant with more than 25 years experience in the accounting and information systems fields. As President of Revolution Accounting and Advisory, Tom directs implementation and outsourcing of accounting processes and technologies for not-for-profit organizations and privately-held companies. In addition to being an officer of the Rafiki Village Project, Tom is founder and past President of Sync or Swim dragon boat team. |
ZOE FISCHER
Zoe Fischer is a graduate of Portland’s Lewis & Clark College where she received a major in Economics, and is currently the Portland Promotions Manager for Brown-Forman. Zoe is passionate about human rights, animal rights, and sustainable development. Zoe is a California native and enjoys spending time with her three legged rescue cat, German Shepard Lab mix, and exploring Oregon with her friends and family. |
MICHELLE PIRPINIAS
Michelle Pirpinias has worked as a hospital clinical pharmacist in Melbourne, Australia, and in policy development at the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). She has gained a Masters of Public Health at the University of Melbourne, and has a strong interest in international health and development. Michelle has done volunteer work in the Solomon Islands and more recently in the Philippines with the World Health Organization. She is currently living in Portland with her husband and toddler. |
SHEILA WALTERS MATSUDA
Sheila is an international educational development specialist, an advocate of Mother Tongue education and language access, and a practitioner of culturally responsive qualitative research. She served with Peace Corps Response in Malawi evaluating the sustainability of disaster risk reduction (DRR), Water and Sanitation Hygiene (WASH), gender equity, women’s empowerment, and agriculture interventions aimed at improving food security and resilience. Returning to the US as the pandemic hit, she focused on language access for vulnerable populations in Honolulu that suffered from the lack of linguistically sensitive information about COVID-19. Currently, she teaches Japanese language and culture at Portland Community College. Sheila supports RVP's small-scale community-driven collaborative approach to sustainable development. |
DANA CROSBY
Dana Crosby has worked in several educational settings, from teaching English in Hanoi, Vietnam to the classrooms of public schools around the Portland, OR area. Her interests in air and water quality, environmental justice and community health led her to complete a Masters of Public Health at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health (Portland, OR), where she focused on Environmental Systems and Human Health. Dana is interested in the intersection(s) of sustainable development, education, environmental justice and global health. |
KARLEY LAVERTY
Karley has worked in community and youth development since 2015, globally and domestically. She graduated with a Bachelor of Health Studies from Portland State University and is a Certified Health Education Specialist through NCHEC. She has extensive lived and working experience with youth and adults from various cultures and backgrounds and has developed and implemented several culturally relevant curricula for health promotion and education. She has lived in several different places some of which are; Idaho, Oregon, Alaska, and Sierra Leone. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, adventuring, trying new food, meeting new people and experiencing new cultures. |
ANNE TRAINOR