Meet the Team
Global Village Connect is a small organization on purpose. Small means we know every community we serve, every student we sponsor, every goat we place. Here are the people who make that possible — and who hold the mission as their own.
Joanne founded Global Village Connect. After adopting her youngest child from Ethiopia and 25 years of travel, she came home with one conviction: no parent should have to give up a child for lack of food or schooling. She spent the next decade building the programs you see today — projects that connect children to opportunity and help whole families become economically self-sufficient.
Executive Director
Myriam leads Global Village Connect — building the team, the systems, and the strategy that turn the mission into operations. Day to day, she's the bridge between donors, the board, and our Uganda team — making sure every program decision is grounded in what's actually happening in the field.
Program Manager
Phoebe runs GVC's work on the ground in Uganda. She coordinates our programs and is the trusted relationship behind every school headmaster and community leader we work with. She speaks Lusoga, Luganda, and Kiswahili; which means she can sit in any communities and have a real conversation.
Program Trainer
Honest leads our Community Development program from the ground. A certified Street Business School trainer, she runs every cohort and conducts the one-on-one coaching visits that turn the curriculum into real micro-enterprises.
Board Secretary
Debbie has followed the Abayudaya Jewish community of Uganda since 2002. In 2016, she finally got to visit — and taught challah baking at the Sholom Women's Bakery. A social worker by training and a lifelong advocate for the people in front of her, she brings that same listening-first ethos to the board.
Treasurer
Adrienne has been with Global Village Connect since the day it started. A director at Tefen USA with 20+ years of Fortune 500 operations experience — financial strategy, business transformation, Six Sigma — she keeps GVC's books, budgets, and disbursement processes airtight. Every receipt has crossed her desk.
Board Member
Heather has spent her career raising money for causes that matter — higher education, civil rights, environmental protection. She built and led development teams for the Great North Innocence Project and the Minneapolis Jewish Federation, and now serves as Midwest Regional Director of Philanthropy for the Trust for Public Land. She brings the institutional fundraising muscle a small nonprofit can rarely afford to staff.
We don't hire often. But when we do, we look for people who'd rather know one community deeply than ten communities superficially. If that sounds like you — let's talk.
