US Board
David Newman
President and Founder
David has traveled widely throughout the developing world, driven by a curiosity about the lives and cultures of people far from his own. It was a visit to Gijega Primary School in Dumbeta Ward that set the RVP's founding story in motion, and David has remained connected to the people and community of Dumbeta Ward ever since.
A family nurse practitioner and owner of Health Plus, David brings both clinical expertise and a broad understanding of health disparities to his work with the RVP. David is passionate about social and economic justice, human rights, health equity, universal quality education, and environmental protection. He is joined in this work by his wife, fellow board member Laura Orgel.
Laura Orgel
Secretary
Laura Orgel, Ph.D., has worked with children her whole life. First as an educator and now as a psychologist, her work with disadvantaged children and families has helped her understand the impact of generational poverty on learning and development. Laura is the secretary of the Board, and as such she is involved with RVP at every level. Her visits to Dumbeta Ward have been illuminating and humbling. More locally, Laura has long been engaged in connecting foster youth to needed services, through her affiliations with A Home Within and other agencies. She is devoted to her family and also loves hiking, swimming, books, and birds.
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.
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 Global Studies and Japanese language and culture at Portland Community College. Sheila supports RVP's small-scale community-driven collaborative approach to sustainable development.
Frankline Muthomi
Dr. Frankline Muthomi is an Assistant Professor in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government, Portland State University (PSU), where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the Department of Public Administration. His research interests include citizen participation, participatory budgeting, performance budgeting, and budget reforms in local governments. While there is a wide range of research on citizen participation, I tend to focus on whether and how individuals, groups, and communities can influence and change budgetary decisions in local governments. Dr. Muthomi has publications in top journals like Public Administration Review and Public Administration, and has presented his research to both scholars and practitioners in international and national conferences. He has vested interest in researching and publishing in the Journal of Behavioral Public Administration. Dr. Muthomi is a Kenyan immigrant, a multilingual speaker (English, Swahili, and other tribal languages), and enjoys connecting and networking with people from diverse background in pursuing shared goals.
Jeremy Orgel
Jeremy Orgel is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst living in Austin, Texas. Throughout his medical education, professional training, and career, he has been involved in providing medical and mental health care to underserved and disadvantaged communities in Mississippi, New York City, London, and northern California. He has also had a lifelong interest in environmental issues and a passion for ornithology. After being a donor to the Rafiki Village Project for many years, he traveled to Tanzania in 2025 and saw for himself how much impact the organization has had on people’s lives in Dumbeta Ward, and how much more work there is to do in collaboration with the community. This transformative experience inspired him to become a Board member. He is particularly interested in helping the Dumbeta Dispensary to serve more people while improving the quality of the health care that it delivers.