Anne Williams, Chair

Coordinator, University of Oregon International Resource Center

Anne M. Williams is a lawyer, manager, and development specialist with expertise in democracy and governance, private sector development, interpretation of foreign laws and experience in development program implementation. A member of the New York State Bar Association, she received both her Master’s degree and her Juris Doctorate from the State University of New York, Buffalo.

Currently the Coordinator of the University of Oregon International Resource Center (which she established in 2000), Ms. Williams brings to the Tostan board a wealth of development and management experience in Africa. For over 20 years, she worked for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as Regional Legal Advisor in Swaziland, Morocco, and Ivory Coast; as Senior Advisor for Africa Bureau in Democracy and Governance; and as USAID Mission Director in Guinea-Bissau, Chad and Senegal. She has also worked with the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State, and she has reviewed and advised international documents including the OHADA Treaty and other laws affecting francophone Africa. She has been on the Tostan board since 2000 and was elected as chair in 2003.

Primary Roles:

In addition to her role as chairperson, Anne’s focus with the Board of Directors has been in legal matters, management, and strategic planning.

Executive Director, Tostan

Living and working in Senegal for over 32 years, Molly Melching has dedicated her life to the empowerment of communities at the grassroots level.  She has created two original basic education programs for women, adolescent girls, and their communities.  Molly is highly regarded for her expertise in non-formal education, human rights training, and social transformation.  Her work with Tostan, the NGO which she founded in 1991, has brought her international attention for cross-cutting results in many areas of development--including reductions in infant and maternal mortality, school and birth registration campaigns, the emergence of female leadership, the abandonment of Female Genital Cutting (FGC) and child marriage by over 3,300 communities in Senegal, and many other results. Molly received the Humanitarian Alumni Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999 and the Sargent Shriver Distinguished Award for Humanitarian Service in 2002. In 2005, she was awarded Sweden's Anna Lindh Award for Tostan's work in human rights.

Primary Roles:

Within the Board of Directors, Molly represents the interests of Tostan’s participants and staff, as well as the founding vision and current philosophies of the organization.   Molly is Tostan’s primary fundraiser.

Roy Stacy

Chief of Party, Chemonics

Program Director Famine Early Warning Systems Network

Roy Stacey is a senior manager and policy analyst with 35 years of practical and analytical experience with international development, economic policy, food security, agriculture, and trade, principally in Africa. Well-known and respected among key organizations involved in agriculture and food security issues, including USAID, U.N. Development Program (UNDP), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and regional agencies such as Club du Sahel, CILSS, Agrhymet and Southern African Development Community (SADC), Roy brings to the board an extensive knowledge of African development issues from a policy-maker’s perspective. Roy is experienced in the conceptualization and management of annual, long-term, and strategic work plans, and in the coordination of large, multidisciplinary teams. He also has policy negotiation experience at the ministerial level with African and European governments, and with the U.S. Congress. Roy is strongly committed to capacity building and to the development of community-based and developing country solutions. His managerial and executive capacity in directing U.S. overseas missions, important research programs, international secretariats, and donor coordination systems have been invaluable assets for the Board of Directors since he joined in 2001.

Primary Roles:

Roy ’s role on the Board of Directors focuses on general management, resource deployment, and grant and proposal development.

Cheikh Mbacke

Cheikh Seydil Moctar Mbacke, Ph.D. is a Statistician/Demographer with broad experience in international development, capacity building, management, and training. He has his PhD from University of Pennsylvania (1986), and spent 6 years at the Centre for Applied Research on Population & Development (CERPOD) in Bamako, Mali as head of the Training Division. He also spent 14 Years at Rockefeller Foundation as Program Officer for Pop Sciences (92-99), Director for Africa (1999-2003), Vice President for Admin and Regional Programs (2003-2005), and Senior Advisor (2005-2006). He is now part-time senior adviser to the Population Program of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation based in Dakar, Senegal, where he is helping in the development and implementation of the Foundation's activities in Africa. Cheikh has devoted his career to human and institutional capacity building in Africa and has contributed to the training of scores of African scientists as well as the creation of three major African institutions.

Anne-Charlotte Ringquist, Director of Tostan Sweden

Social Anthropologist, Retired

Anne Charlotte Ringquist was born in 1946 in Karlstad, Sweden. She has a Bachelor of Science in Anaesthetics Nursing (Örebro), a University Diploma in Education ( Stockholm), a Bachelor of Social Science with a major in Social Anthropology ( Uppsala), and a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology ( Stockholm).

Long interested in African culture, over the past decades Anne Charlotte has lived in various parts of the continent together with her husband, a Swedish diplomat. From 1977 to 1981, she lived in Kenya, where she worked in education. Anne Charlotte’s academic studies have primarily dealt with African culture and development, focusing on gender-related issues. After a period in Austria from 1981 to 1984, she returned to Africa, this time living in Tunisia for three years. In 1987, Anne Charlotte moved to Sweden, where she worked in education for six years, spending time developing and teaching courses in social studies for immigrants. Between 1993 and 1999 she lived in Saudi Arabia, where she, among other activities, gave lectures to foreign companies on inter-cultural communication and worked for the Swedish Migration Board in a camp housing war refugees from the first Gulf War.

In 2000, Anne Charlotte moved to Senegal, where she soon became aware of Tostan’s work and immediately identified with its methods. She became a Tostan volunteer, attending many events and producing both documents and films on Tostan’s program and organization. She continued in this role until leaving Senegal in 2004. Upon her return to her home country, she founded Tostan Sweden, an organization whose goal is to gather support in Sweden for Tostan’s activities.

Primary Roles:

Anne Charlotte has focused her efforts with the Tostan Board of Directors on public relations, fundraising and advocacy work in Scandinavia and Europe.

Michael Gibbons

Coordinator, Emergency Education Project, Council on Foreign Relations Center for Universal Education

Faculty in Residence , International Training and Education Program, American University

Michael has worked in the areas of community development, basic education and social justice since the mid-1970s in Asia, Africa, Latin America and low-income areas of the USA. He specializes in basic and non-formal education, child development, training of adult educators and building institutional capacity for community development. He holds a Ph.D. from the Fielding Institute in Human and Organizational Development, with a focus on learning processes within educational programs. As Associate Director, Michael helped develop the portfolio and grant-making systems for the Banyan Tree Foundation, which funds and supports basic education and children’s rights projects in Africa, South Asia and Washington, DC. Mr. Gibbons teaches courses in non-formal and adult education in the International Training and Education Program (ITEP) at the American University School of Education.

Primary Roles:

Michael Gibbons ’ roles since joining the Board have centered on strategic planning, board planning and development, and donor relations.

Barbara Dunn

Director of Human Resources, Global Research and Development, Colgate-Palmolive Company 

Since 1986, Ms. Dunn has held multiple financial, information systems, change management and human resources positions at the Colgate-Palmolive Company.  In 1998 she became Director of Human Resources and has held positions of increasing responsibility in various divisions of Colgate including Latin America, Global Information Technology, Global Business Services and Global Research and Development.   She has been involved in multiple strategic projects including the implementation of an enterprise resource planning software in Latin American countries, the implementation of shared services in the global human resource function, the merger and relocation of an acquired company and the start-up of the human resources department in a subsidiary company, where she won the Colgate Chairman's "You Can Make a Difference" Award.   She is respected for her practical knowledge, her relationship building skills and her broad business background.   Barbara graduated magna cum laude from Colorado State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting.    

Primary Roles:

Since joining the board, Barbara has been a leadership resource to Tostan in human resources, financial management and organizational development.