Board
Joseph Nganga (Chair), CEO, Renewable Energy Ventures
Mr. Nganga is an experienced entrepreneur having founded and run successful companies in Kenya and in the USA. Mr. Nganga also sits on the Board of Queens University Alumni Association and Carolina for Kibera. Mr. Nganga has extensive exposure to renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies having traveled widely and worked with various associations and companies in the industry. Mr. Nganga also currently consulting with infoDev at the World Bank on Climate technology innovation in Kenya. Mr. Nganga started his career in Investment Banking at Bank of America Global Corporation and Investment Banking group in Charlotte, NC. Mr. Nganga received his BA Finance and Marketing from Queens University of Charlotte. He has also attended an Executive Education Program at Harvard Business School on Governing for Non Profit Organizations.
Rye Barcott
Member of the Board of Directors
While an undergraduate on an NROTC scholarship at UNC in 2001, Barcott founded Carolina For Kibera (CFK) with the late nurse Tabitha Atieno Festo and community organizer Salim Mohamed, who each shared the conviction that the poor have the solutions to the problems that they face. CFK emerged in part out of research on youth violence and participatory development that Barcott conducted as part of an unpublished senior honors thesis in Peace, War, and Defense.
Barcott served five years on active duty in the Marine Corps before earning a combined MBA and MPA at Harvard as a Reynolds Social Entrepreneurship Fellow and George Leadership Fellow. He served for two years on the Harvard Endowment’s Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility and is currently a member of the World Learning Board of Trustees, the UNC NROTC Board of Directors, the UNC Chancellor’s Innovation Circle, and the Board of Directors of Three Ships Media.
A TED Fellow, Barcott is currently writing a book that tells the CFK story and juxtaposes humanitarian and military service (under contract, Bloomsbury Publishing).