Trustees
Andy Chapman | chair | ColaLife
Andy’s biography to follow.
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Joanna Knowles | treasurer | ColaLife
An ACMA qualified accountant with 20 years’ experience in the charity sector, Jo is also a non-executive director at Lewisham University Hospital. She has held posts at Director of Finance level at national and international charities managing budgets in excess of GB£1.5 million. She has also worked as Company Secretary and has experience in developing policies and procedures in the areas of risk, audit and fraud.
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Simon Burne | trustee | ColaLife
Simon is a fund-raising professional, with experience in Direct Marketing, Donor Development, Major Gifts, Trusts, Major Events, Corporates, Community Fundraising and Charity Retail. He also trains in communications and fund-raising and advises on client management and strategic planning. He has worked at director level in several major children’s charities, as well as for the Intermediate Technology Development Group (now Practical Action). He spent 6 years in developing countries and has written/edited publications on poverty, AIDS, Social Development and fund-raising.
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Rob Ellis | trustee | ColaLife
Head of Sustainable Development at the Co-operative Group, Rob’s work includes community engagement and building cross sector collaborations. He offers ColaLife experience in working with diverse stakeholders, advising on green and ethical issues, and insights into corporate issues.
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Executive
Simon Berry
founder and CEO | +260 (0)9755 72175 (Zambia) | skype: sxberry | simon [at] colalife.org
Jane Berry
business development director | jane [at] colalife [dot] org
Rohit Ramchandani
public health adviser | roramcha [at] jhsph [dot] edu
Aidan Kelly
social media volunteer| aidanmkelly [at] gmail.com
Tom Lee
volunteer event and PR manager (Autumn/Spring 2010/11)
Dennis Tretter
volunteer intern (Summer/Autumn 2010)
Simon Berry | founder and CEO | ColaLife
+260 (0)9755 72175 | skype: sxberry | simon [at] colalife.org
Simon is the key visionary behind ColaLife, and brings a life-time’s experience in cross-sector stakeholder relations, rural development, open innovation and new media. He does most of the public speaking on ColaLife, keeps the blog up to date and does most of the graphics and artwork.
Simon is a recognised innovator/social entrepreneur. He gained community development expertise in South America (early 80s) and has managed innovative projects in the UK and abroad since 1984, when he was commissioned by the British Overseas Development Agency (ODA, now DfID) to manage a politically sensitive co-operation project at Alexandria University, Egypt.
From 1986-9 he managed institutional development in Northern Zambia (ODA). On his return to UK he combined international consultancy with establishing a UK-based charity/social enterprise (ruralnet|uk), which brought internet-based innovations and early social media applications to support rural areas and support networks.
Simon has managed partnership projects, both large and small, including the EU funded Regionet project (budget 3.4 mECU; 34 public, private and NGO partners from 9 countries).
More recently, he managed a cross-departmental Ministerial Task Force for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs involving 4 Ministers and 16 NGOs, where his team won the national Compact Award for Excellence in cross-sector working.
Simon has won a number of other awards and nominations in social enterprise and open innovation, and is qualified in Project Management in addition to Undergraduate and Masters degrees.
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Jane Berry | business development director | ColaLife
jane [at] colalife [dot] org
Jane has worked with Simon for over 20 years; they work best on innovations together. She is ColaLife’s researcher and bid-writer. She advises on business elements, works with Simon to design presentations, workshops and communications, and ghost writes the best bits of the blog (allegedly). A wordsmith by vocation, she found an outlet in researching and writing Business Plans and funding bids for non-profits and Social Enterprises, as well as managing a range of capacity building programmes for the ‘Third Sector’.
A qualified Business Counsellor and trainer, she has a track record as an inventive and creative project manager, designing whole programmes as well as events, tools and learning games to bring enterprise concepts to the non-profit sector. These have included Women’s Enterprise and ICT initiatives for EU-funded programmes; DirectSupport – organisational development for small community-based enterprises – commissioned by the UK’s Department for Education and Skills (now DIUS), and net:gain – an ICT strategic development programme for non-profits.
Jane originally trained as a linguist and spent over 12 years in developing countries teaching English; she has also been on Social Enterprise study trips to China, Japan and in Europe. Jane has been involved in successful partnership working with Local Authorities, Government Departments, non-departmental bodies, Higher Education institutions, Support Organisations, Social Enterprises and community groups. She is a consummate ‘digester of detail’ and a ‘completer-finisher’ who likes the challenge of delivering to deadline and budget.
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Rohit Ramchandani | public health adviser | ColaLife
DrPH Candidate, Johns Hopkins University
roramcha [at] jhsph [dot] edu
Rohit has been supporting ColaLife for the past year on a voluntary basis including helping with the technical aspects of various bid outlines. He will support us on a range of aspects in piloting ColaLife including trial design, M&E and data collection, data analysis and write-up/publication of the results. His expertise and contacts will be invaluable in academic aspects of the project including knowledge translation within the global public health community and helping in terms of advocacy and engaging relevant stakeholders.
Prior to starting his Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Rohit worked as a Senior Health Advisor at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) where he worked in areas including tuberculosis, malaria, as well as Canada’s work on the G8 Maternal and Child Health Initiative (Muskoka Initiative). He is currently a member of the Innovation and Financial Gap Working Groups of the United Nations Secretary General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health and Principal at Antara Global Health Advisors. Some of Rohit’s past work includes:
- Ad-Hoc Committee Member of the Affordable Medicines Facility – malaria (AMFm) representing the Global Fund constituency of Canada, Germany, and Switzerland;
- Member of the Roll Back Malaria AMFm Taskforce (co-chair of the Equity Working Group);
- Steering Committee member of the Global Health Research Initiative (GHRI), a research collaboration of the Government of Canada;
- Senior Analyst for the Healthcare and Life Sciences practice of a top tier management consulting firm; and
- Project manager while on internship with the WHO in Hyderabad, India through the LV Prasad Eye Institute.
Rohit holds a Master of Public Health (MPH) from Boston University School of Public Health and a Bachelors of Science in Health Studies and Gerontology from the University of Waterloo.
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Aidan Kelly | social media volunteer | ColaLife
Aidan began volunteering with ColaLife in May 2011 helping to increase interaction with ColaLife’s growing Facebook profiles. To date he has helped develop and run a campaign to consolidate ColaLife supporters on Facebook. He continues to support ColaLife administering our Facebook profiles and helping to build awareness of the project.
Aidan shares a passion for international development, having volunteered in Central and South America before returning to the UK to work in the charitable sector. His background is in community development and project management. Most recently Aidan worked as Project Manager with the charity Media Trust delivering the Community Voices programme.
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Tom Lee | volunteer event and PR manager | ColaLife (Autumn/Spring 2010/11)
Tom worked as a full-time volunteer with ColaLife from October to December 2010 organising our Christmas reception and increasing awareness and support. He continues to volunteer for ColaLife and is now focussing on growing our fan base in America. His passion for Social Media and technology has helped recruit many new ColaLife supporters and advisors. Tom recently left the RAF after 10 years and has now relocated with his family to San Francisco. He had an extremely varied military career and enjoys the challenge of something different. His ability to rapidly learn new skills and work in unfamiliar environments has been extremely valuable to ColaLife and we look forward to calling on his wide international experience and Arabic Interpreting skills.
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Dennis Tretter | volunteer intern | ColaLife (Summer/Autumn 2010)
Dennis completed a four month internship at ColaLife in October 2010. He has now returned to Germany to finish his studies in Industrial Engineering. His tasks were mainly of an administrative nature, but he is also carried out research in to supply chain management, country and industry profiles, to support the decisions made in ColaLife.
He is very interested in gaining experiences in different cultural environments in both working and studying. Before his internship he stayed four months in Turkey to study at the Istanbul Technical University (ITU).
During the last 10 years he has worked for different volunteering organisations. For one year he was the vice president for finance of his local AIESEC committee in Kaiserslautern.
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