The Team

ColaLife is now closed, but we thank our trustee board and other supporters, who are listed here for historic interest.

Our Trustees – The Final Board
Executive
Volunteers – past and present
Past Trustees

Our Trustees – The Final Board

 
Emma Danforth | chair | ColaLife

Emma was our chair of trustees from 2019 to 2024. Throughout her tenure, she was a senior associate at Allen & Overy LLP in their regulatory and asset management practice. Through Allen & Overy LLP Emma was involved in various pro bono initiatives, which included in particular providing on-going legal assistance to ColaLife and several other charities. Emma initially provided legal support to ColaLife on obtaining its charitable status and was invited to become a trustee in 2013. She succeeded Andy Chapman as Chair in 2019.
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Michael Coombs | treasurer | ColaLife

When he joined the board, Michael was an investment professional at CDC Group (the UK’s development finance institution) working in the consumer team focused on direct equity investments into healthcare, education, retail and agriculture companies in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Before CDC, Michael worked as a consultant for McKinsey for 3 years, advising private, public and social sector organisations in the UK, Europe and West Africa. Michael first supported ColaLife in designing the charity’s scaling strategy as part of the Ashoka Globalizer programme, and was later invited to become a Trustee in 2018. He served, including as acting treasurer, until the charity’s closure in 2024. He is now working in the field of sustainability and is based in USA.
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Zac Mwanje | trustee | ColaLife

Zac became a trustee in Mar-18 and served until our closure in 2024. Founder and Chairman of Global Higher Education Partnerships, he is also that company’s Chief Executive Officer. In addition, he is also the CEO of Z’S Local Limited, a local supermarket based in Leeds. He is currently serving as a School Governor for Greenhill Primary School, which achieved a good score in the recent Ofsted inspection.

Zac has over 20 years of academic experience working in both further and higher education. During his extensive career at Leeds Metropolitan University (now Leeds Beckett University) he was a senior lecturer/International Teacher Fellow. He made huge contribution to Assessment, Learning and Teaching across the University and in Africa and gained the recognition as an International Teacher Fellow. Zac helped to establish and run distance learning Master’s Degree in Public Health in Zambia and the Gambia for more than 7 years. He also managed a highly successful DeIPHE- DfID funded project from 2003 – 2010 on Solid waste management for small and medium enterprises with Dar-Es-Salaam Institute of Technology in Tanzania and Chainama College of Health Sciences in Zambia. In 2008 Zac coordinated the signing of MOC between Association of African Universities, Commonwealth Association of Polytechnics in Africa and Leeds Met, which culminated in an international conference – UK-Africa Higher Education Partnerships.

Zac holds a BSc(Hons) in Environmental Health, a master’s in Public Health Engineering and a PhD in Upflow Grave and Sand Water Roughing Filtration. He is married to Janet.

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Nicky Wilkinson | trustee | ColaLife

Nicky became a trustee in Mar-18 and served until the charity closed in 2024. Nicky is a freelance consultant specialising in social innovation, sustainable development and fundraising. She is based in the Far East. Prior to her current role Nicky was Regional Partnerships Director for the British Council, covering 14 markets in Asia.

Previously she worked for Nesta (the UK’s social innovation foundation) managing part of a £10m social innovation fund. Before that she held several international development roles living and working across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Nicky is a Sustainability Lab Global Sustainability Fellow and holds a first class honours degree in international development from Kings College London

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Executive

Simon Berry
founder and CEO | simon [at] colalife.org
Jane Berry
business development director | jane [at] colalife [dot] org
Rohit Ramchandani
public health adviser | roramcha [at] jhsph [dot] edu

Volunteers who have helped us include:
Ralf Siwiti
distribution and marketing adviser | rasiwiti [at] yahoo.com
Beth Anne Pratt
research/best practice adviser | volunteer | bethannepratt [at] glohi.org
Abbott Katz
data visualisation | volunteer | abbott [at] abbottkatz.com
Aidan Kelly
social media | volunteer | aidanmkelly [at] gmail.com
Kieran Harrod
graphic design | volunteer | mail [at] kieranharrod.co.uk
Tom Lee
volunteer event and PR manager | volunteer (Autumn/Spring 2010/11)
Dennis Tretter
volunteer intern (Summer/Autumn 2010)

Dario Domingo

volunteer statistician, through The Royal Statistical Society, 2023/24.

Simon Berry | co-founder and CEO | ColaLife
simon [at] colalife.org

Simon is an accidental, award-winning innovator, designer and social entrepreneur. He is the visionary behind ColaLife which has helped transform access to the recommended diarrhoea treatment (ORS and Zinc) for children in Zambia. In 2017 he also instigated and then led an effort to get co-packaged ORS and Zinc on the WHO Essential Medicines List (EML). This was achieved in Jul-19.

Simon continues to support the ORS/Zinc Co-pack Alliance (ORSZCA) – which he co-founded – to build on this global EML listing and accelerate the adoption of this change by national governments. If 90% of diarrhoea cases received ORS and Zinc we would halve child mortality from diarrhoea (saving more that 250,000 lives a year).

Over a 45-year career Simon has been a leader in the voluntary, private and public sectors. He has lived and worked in South America, the Caribbean, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and the UK. He graduated in Agriculture (BSc (Hons), Reading) and has a post graduate qualification in Tropical Animal Health (MSc, Edinburgh).

In 2015 Simon was elected to the Ashoka Fellowship of social entrepreneurs.

In 2023 Simon was awarded an OBE for services to global child health.

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Jane Berry | co-founder, Business Development Director | ColaLife
jane [at] colalife [dot] org

Jane has worked with Simon for over 30 years; they work best on innovations together: Simon came up with the idea of co-delivering life saving medicines with Coca-Cola; it was Jane who suggested a pack that could nest in the space between cola bottles. A qualified Business Counsellor and trainer, she advised on the business elements of ColaLife’s projects. Her past track record features inventive and creative project management and business training; she has designed and run whole programmes as well as events, tools and learning games, particularly to bring enterprise concepts to the non-profit sector.

For ColaLife, her role spanned research, bid-writing, fund management and reporting, as well as charity finances and administration. But her real passion is in community development and participatory methods for innovation: workshop design, co-creation, project design and communications. Prior to ColaLife, her roles have included design and management of Women’s Enterprise and ICT initiatives for EU-funded programmes; DirectSupport, an 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 that put business needs before technology. All her roles have featured successful partnership working, for example, with Local Authorities, Government Departments, non-departmental bodies, Higher Education institutions, NGOs, Social Enterprises and community groups.

Jane originally trained as a linguist and speaks 5 languages – 3 fluently. She spent over 12 years in developing countries teaching English; she has also been on Social Enterprise study trips to China, Japan and in Europe.  She is a consummate ‘digester of detail’ and a ‘completer-finisher’ who likes the challenge of delivering to deadline and budget. More recently, she supports the secretariat for ORSZCA.

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Dr. Rohit Ramchandani, DrPH, MPH, BSc | public health adviser & principal investigator | ColaLife
Chief Executive Officer | Antara Global Health Advisors
Doctor of Public Health | Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
Adjunct Professor | University of Waterloo School of Public Health & Health Systems

rohit [at] colalife [dot] org

Recognised as a “Rising Star in Global Health”, Rohit was ColaLife’s Public Health Adviser. He supported with ColaLife from nearly the start and in addition to having played a key role in guiding the development of the concept, establishing new partnerships, and writing concept papers, he has been a central advocate for ColaLife, and was the Principal Investigator for COTZ (the ColaLife Operational Trial in Zambia) and KYTS (Kit Yamoyo Transition to Scale).

Rohit was CEO at Antara Global Health Advisors, a Canadian global health advisory firm focused on helping organizations around the world (donors, governments, foundations, private sector, philanthropists, etc.) in the achievement of improving lives, increasing equity, and preventing needless loss of life by providing global health expertise, experience, partnerships, and evidence-based public health and management advise.

He holds a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Leading the design, evaluation and analysis of COTZ (our proof of concept) was a core part of his doctoral research. He is a member of the UN Innovation Working Group under the Every Woman, Every Child Initiative, an Adjunct Professor [of Global Health Innovation] at the University of Waterloo School of Public Health & Health Systems, serves on the Advisory Board of Raising the Village, a Canadian NGO and is a trustee of the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada.

He started his career in management consulting with Accenture’s Healthcare and Life Sciences practice and then served as a Sr. Health Advisor at the Canadian International Development Agency (now Global Affairs Canada) where he advised on investments in areas including tuberculosis, malaria, as well as Canada’s work on the G8 Maternal and Child Health Initiative (Muskoka Initiative). Some highlights from his past work include:

• Sr. M&E Specialist and Strategic Advisor for numerous global health investments including:
  • Canada’s investment in the Grand Challenges Canada (GCC) innovation platform, including detailed research on the successes, challenges and paths to scale for global health innovations from around the world
  • USAID’s work in expanding access to products and services for HIV and sexual and reproductive health in Zambia
  • DFAT Australia’s investments in Product Development Partnerships (PDPs)
  • The Aga Khan Foundation’s Central Asia Health Systems Strengthening (CAHSS) initiative
  • World Vision’s Maternal and Under-5 Nutrition and Child Health (MUNCH), and Save the Children’s Improving Nutrition for Mothers, Newborns, and Children (INMNC), projects in Afghanistan
  • amongst many others.
• 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; and
• Project manager while on internship with the WHO in Hyderabad, India through the LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI).

Rohit’s current research and practice interests lie in the area of global health innovation, global health delivery, health markets, multi-sectoral partnerships (e.g. public-private partnerships), and child health. He is currently working in innovation in psybicilin. In addition to his doctorate, he holds a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology and international health from Boston University School of Public Health and a Bachelors of Science in Health Studies and Gerontology from the University of Waterloo. You can learn more about Rohit here. 

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Ralf Siwiti | distribution and marketing adviser | ColaLife (from Nov-15)

Ralf worked as a consultant to our projects – involved very closely with KZF and Pharmanova staff to help us improve the distribution of Kit Yamoyo and increase sales.

Ralf has highly relevant experience in the distribution and marketing of Fast Moving Consumer Goods. He worked for Unilever for four years until May this year and among his key achievements were:

1. Oversight of 40% of Unilever’s business in Zambia to deliver 12% growth in 2014
2. Delivered 8.6% Underlying Sales Growth for Unilever Zambia’s biggest Brand in 2014.
3. Ran brand promotion initiatives that enabled key Foods Brand to recover from low performance affected by currency devaluation
4. Managed 4 key new product launches (2014: LUX soap and DAWN lotion, 2015: ROYCO Cubes, LIFEBUOY re-launch programme)

Ralf is a graduate of the University of Greenwich (BA Marketing) and the Evelyn Hone College (Diploma Marketing).

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Volunteers – past and present

Beth Anne Pratt | research/best practice adviser | volunteer | ColaLife (February – December 2012)
Beth Anne served as a member of our virtual advisory board

Beth began volunteering for ColaLife in February 2012 and assisted us for several years. She has since co-authored one of ColaLife’s key academic papers. A social anthropologist, Beth has done research on improving access to health technologies and services for the last six years. As a partner with Global Health Insights, she has consulted on child health, reproductive health, malaria and health systems strengthening projects for a host of local and global organizations.

She has lived and worked in Africa since 1996, when she carried out two years of ethnographic research among Maasai children in northern Tanzania to understand the social and economic changes in their lives. She first began working on projects targeting the barriers and facilitating factors associated with access to health technologies in 2006, as a contributing author of the book Access: How Do Good Health Technologies Get to Poor People in Poor Countries? (Laura J. Frost and Michael Reich). Her experience with access to medicines includes evaluation and scenario planning work for the Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria, country case studies on access strategy for the International Program on Microbicides, development of timelines for access to new drugs and vaccines for the PDP Steering Committee, and research into adoption of new health technologies for PATH and DFID. Her interest in corporate social responsibility was first sparked from working on an initiative linking NGOs and corporations in Egypt via both financial awards and capacity-building partnerships.

Beth holds a PhD in Anthropology from Boston University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Health Systems Management from the University of London. Together with partners Keepers Zambia Foundation, she helped ColaLife develop market research focus group methodology, research IEC/BCC materials, and adhere to best practices in child health.

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Abbott Katz | data visualisation | volunteer

DataKind UK, the UK data-for-good community linked us up with Abbott Katz a data scientist and Excel expert who is working with us in a voluntary capacity to create a dashboard to bring alive the data being collected by frontline workers as they support wholesalers and retailers who carry the Kit Yamoyo product. Throughout our scale-up projects, these dashboards were published periodically here.

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Aidan Kelly | social media volunteer | ColaLife

Aidan began volunteering with ColaLife in May 2011 and for several years he helped to increase interaction with ColaLife’s growing Facebook profiles. He helped develop and run a campaign to consolidate ColaLife supporters on Facebook and 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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Kieran Harrod | graphic design volunteer | ColaLife

Kieran responded to a call on our Facebook page for help producing a ColaLife poster to be displayed at the World Health Congress events. His original poster was a work of art and he has subsequently modified it to show the production Anti-Diarrhoea Kit. This was used to support a ColaLife exhibit at the Premsela, the Netherlands Institute for Design and Fashion from late June until September 2012. This latest version of the poster is here.

Kieran runs his own freelance graphic design and marketing business based just north of Derby. He’s practiced design since 1997, including 7 years as an in house designer and marketing manager for the UK arm of a multinational. He prides himself on being professional, reliable and creative, putting integrity at the heart of his practice. His company website is here: Derby Graphic Design.

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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. Tom left the RAF after 10 years andrelocated with his family to San Francisco. He helped to grow our fan base in America. His passion for Social Media and technology helped recruit many new ColaLife supporters and advisors. 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 was extremely valuable to ColaLife.

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Dennis Tretter | volunteer intern | ColaLife (Summer/Autumn 2010)

Dennis completed a four month internship at ColaLife in October 2010. He then returned to Germany to finish his studies in Industrial Engineering and on into the workplace. His tasks were mainly of an administrative nature, but he also carried out research in to supply chain management, country and industry profiles, to support the decisions made in ColaLife.

He remained 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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Past Trustees

Andy Chapman | founding chair | ColaLife

Andy was the founding Chair of ColaLife and served until the end of 2018.
Andy was a Director of the Economy for the Common Good UK, a social enterprise set up in 2017 to promote the principles and practice of the Economy for the Common Good movement in the UK. A highly experienced facilitator and coach he has over 35 years’ experience of working with and for businesses that range from large multinational organisations to charities and public sector bodies. He lives in London.
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Simon Burne | past trustee | ColaLife

Simon was a fund-raising professional, who served on our board for several years, bringing experience in Direct Marketing, Donor Development, Major Gifts, Trusts, Major Events, Corporates, Community Fundraising and Charity Retail. His skills included training in communications and fund-raising and advising 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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Joanna Knowles | past trustee | ColaLife

Jo was our founding treasurer and returned to help us through the last phase of ColaLife’s existence. An ACMA qualified accountant with 20 years’ experience in the charity sector, Jo was 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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Rob Ellis | past trustee | ColaLife

Head of Sustainable Development at the Co-operative Group, Rob’s work includes community engagement and building cross sector collaborations. He served on the ColaLife board for several years, bringing experience in working with diverse stakeholders, advising on green and ethical issues, and insights into corporate issues.
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Last reviewed: 26-Mar-24