Our Local Team
Patrick Muvunga Trickpa
Patrick studied mechanical engineering in Goma at ITIG, this is where his love for architectural design comes from. Nakivale Refugee Settlement has been a canvas for him, a place to express his passion for designing unique constructions such as bottles houses, geodesic domes and even an Amphitheatre.
He also co-founded NakivART, a project that showcases and supports artwork in Nakivale, in 2014. His artworks include paintings, sculptures and comic books illustrating various topics refugees can relate to – such as his 2014 book Stella, which discusses how to deal with trauma.
He joined SINA Uganda in 2015 to learn more about entrepreneurship, mentoring and coaching. The following year he co-founded Opportunigee to help young refugees in Nakivale become entrepreneurs and job creators. He has a certificate in Peace building and Trauma healing from Pax Cultura. His ample experience in mentoring refugee’s startups and empowering individual creativity and vision in Nakivale made him the best candidate to lead the Hub locally. Patrick has been the CEO of Promise Hub Nakivale since 2018.
Joseph Kiza Kashulike
Joseph believes the key to success is always in one’s hands regardless of social status. He studied Human Resources Management and developed a small distribution company in early 2017. He joined Opportunigee later that year and in 2018 joined Promise hub as an entrepreneurship mentor. Joseph enjoys delivering workshops on business management and working on projects related to protecting children's rights. Joseph is also one of the Admin team members of Promise Hub Collective.
Joyce Kiza
In 2017 after living for 2 years in Nakivale, Joyce considered her new home as a where the reality of life can be discovered. That year, at the age of 17, she joined Opportunigee, moved by the idea of creating her own opportunities. She joined Promise Hub in 2018 as a mentor and IT developer.
With a background in Computer Science and a strong passion for cultural transformation Joyce stays busy by leading The Roots, a carpentry business, organizing cultural dances to promote cross-cultural trust-building and cooperation, mentoring Game Changers and supporting the Hub’s IT infrastructure.
Albert Katangambo
Is a young entrepreneur passionate about writing and designing. In 2016 after finishing secondary school Albert started teaching French at CS OLIVE in DRC. He then joined RTGB as a sport analyst in 2017. He joined Opportunigee in the same year in order to study entrepreneurship and learn the necessary skills to launch his publishing house, Editions plumes sauvages. Albert has been a mentor, Promise Hub Express team member and valued colleague at Promise Hub since February 2019.
Olivier Nzanzu
Olivier is a multi-talented artist who transitioned from traditional to digital art. Starting with Opportunigee in 2018 to develop his entrepreneurial skills, he later became a mentor at Nakivart in art therapy for children. Joining Promise Hub, he explored the digital world, contributing as an illustrator for the Human Journey project. In 2021, he expanded his impact by joining the Local Impact Team.
Moses Kasungu
An artist, activist and leader, Moses was a force for change in Nakivale well before joining Promise Hub as a mentor. He joined Opportunigee's entrepreneurial courses in early 2017 to discover how he can use his musical talent to achieve the change he wanted. Moses founded Kolibriz, a youth empowerment project that organizes weekly performances showcasing local talents. He used his passion for performing arts to motivate and guide the ever increasing number of people who enjoy Kolibriz, over 1000 per week. He believes that art is the best tool for the holistic change and development.
Deborah Kasavubu
Deborah joined Opportunigee in October 2017 to develop her skills in entrepreneurship. Ever since joining the Local Impact Team in Nakivale, Deborah has used her skills to inspire, mentor and mobilize girls to leverage their skills and talents to become self-reliant.
Besides her valuable one-to-ones and workshops on business marketing, Deborah is also one of the Admin team members of Promise Hub Collective.
Mireille Baraka Bisimwa
Mireille has a background in economics and administration. She studied Administration at ITFM Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and then went on to study Economics at UEA University. Mireille has worked for two organizations as a junior economist. After arriving in Nakivale, she joined Opportunigee in 2018 to learn entrepreneurship. Currently, Mireille mentors at Promise Hub where she focuses on financial workshops and oversees the Hub's financial operations, drawing upon her economics expertise.
Daniella Mwanvua
Daniella Mwanvua, a dynamic entrepreneur, started her journey with Opportunigee in 2017. With a passion for community development, she founded Mwinda in 2018, dedicated to illuminating Nakivale. In 2020, she managed the Human Journey project at Promise Hub. Alongside her entrepreneurial ventures, Daniella co-founded Lumbia Collections, crafting unique handmade fashion. She also mentors aspiring entrepreneurs on the local impact team.
Raphael Muvunga
Raphael Muvunga is a skilled life coach, mentor, and community leader based in Uganda. In 2014, he facilitated art workshops for refugee children in Nakivale through Nakivart, using art as a form of therapy and trauma healing. He then joined SINA in 2016 to learn more about entrepreneurship, which inspired him to co-found Opportunigee that same year. Opportunigee aims to help refugees create their own opportunities for livelihood. Raphael has expanded his skills in life coaching and mentoring over the years. In 2020, he joined the Promise Hub's Local Impact Team as a mentor. He also serves as the curator of Shared Studios, Nakivale Portals.
Founders
Dave Erickson,
Co-Founder
Dave is obsessed with the concept of "money as energy" and finding ways to apply this concept to the world's underserved population in order to bring economic opportunity to where it will make a significant difference in people's lives.
Diana Beata Krueger,
Managing Director
With more than 22 years experience in the field of profit and non-profit organizations, Diana has a deep understanding how to roll out projects and to manifest lasting impact.
Harald Neidhardt,
Co-Founder
Combing the minds, creativity, and ideas of his communities MLOVE and futur/io, Harald believes that we can make the world more fair and even for everybody.
George Bugan,
Strategy Advisor
George believes we have an innate desire to improve ourselves and the world around us; identifying the right tools is the only real obstacle.
Marius Großhans, Psychological Consultant
Marius is an entrepreneur and psychologist. As a consultant he helps teachers to communicate their message clearly und learners to build a better life. He believes that each person has something to say and to give in his or her uniqueness.
Advisory Board
We are proud to introduce the members of our Advisory board. These passionate experts are vast in entrepreneurship, talent development, growth and humanitarian aid. We are privileged to have the support, expertise, and connections offered by our diverse board.
Madelynn Martiniere, International Strategist
Mike Zuckerman, Culture Hacker, Global Migration Crisis Expert and Serial Entrepreneur
Marc Buckley, SDG Advocate, Expert Network WEF, Global Food Reformist, Inside Ideas Podcast Host, Climate Speaker, Founder, Social Entrepreneur, Author Menu B
Dr. John Realpe-Gómez, Quantum Machine Learning
Tomas Diez, Urbanist and Co-Founder of Fab Lab
Aape Pohjavirta, Chief Founder of Funzi
Dara Dotz, Field Ready
Claire Davies, Fabra Davies
Judith Murray, Innovator
David Li, Executive Director, Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab
OUR TEAM
DAVE ERICKSON,
CO-FOUNDER
Dave is a lifelong entrepreneur and "establishment disturber". Starting with Eliance Corporation, Dave has spent the last 23 years creating and investing in digital technology and e-commerce businesses. Father of seven children, Dave is dedicated to helping the next generation use technology to create a world of abundance where opportunity and rewards are more evenly distributed.
He is obsessed with the concept of "money as energy" and finding ways to apply this concept to the world's underserved population in order to bring economic opportunity to where it will make a significant difference in people's lives. His favorite word is "no". When someone tells you no, you must be on the right path!
HARALD NEIDHARDT,
CO-FOUNDER
Harald is the founder and curator of MLOVE, the Refugee First Response Center and futur/io institute. As a serial founder he believes in the power of technology to solve humanity’s challenges; he always wants to apply technology for the good of every individual. With his global community MLOVE he created a broad and diverse network of great people. Combing their minds, creativity, and ideas he believes that we can make the world more fair and even for everybody.
DIANA BEATA KRÜGER,
MANAGER
Diana is passionate about the potential empowerment of the Rising Billions to have an improved access to food, education and health in order to add lasting value to local communities. Diana is a researcher by heart and she adds with her applied ethnographic business research methods lasting value to projects via a deep understanding of the true needs of people. With more than 22 years experience in the field of profit and non-profit organizations, she has a deep understanding how to roll out projects and to manifest lasting impact. Diana is very eager to create a future where sustainability in all aspects drives the positive evolvement of humanity.
GEORGE BUGAN
George Bugan is a Trainer & Project Manager who loves working and learning with people. He has worked in diplomacy, the non-profit and private sectors. George loves leveraging resources towards achieving creative and meaningful impact; he has coordinated mentorship projects for semi-abandoned children, offered consultancy to various companies and organized independent workshops on this, and other topics. George believes we have an innate desire to improve ourselves and the world around us; identifying the right tools is the only real obstacle.
ADVISORY BOARD
We are proud to introduce the members of our Advisory board. These passionate experts are vast in entrepreneurship, talent development, growth and humanitarian aid. We are privileged to have the support, expertise, and connections offered by our diverse board.
Madelynn Martiniere
Madelynn Martiniere is an international strategist and facilitator with a decade of experience working with innovators, entrepreneurs and executives to build, activate, and scale open innovation ecosystems for a more equitable and sustainable future. She has worked with dozens of technology-driven organizations to bring about new models of facilitating entrepreneurship, product development, and technical education, across nonprofits, startups, corporate innovation labs, and government initiatives. She previously led community education and communication efforts at Fictiv, a distributed manufacturing platform that serves many of the world’s leading automobile, aerospace, and consumer electronics companies. An early leader and advocate for the Maker Movement, Madelynn was a founding member of Freeside Atlanta, and has been director, board member, and advisor to a plethora of global maker facilities, programs, and companies.
Aape Pohjavirta, Chief Founder of Funzi
Aape is Chief Evangelist and Founder at Funzi, a mobile learning service ecosystem with initial focus on emerging markets. He sits on advisory boards of several research projects and technology programs and coaches entrepreneurs at the Aalto University, EIT - European Institute of Technology, Startup Sauna, DTBi and other institutions and curates the Education and Impact tracks at SLUSH Helsinki. Aape has worked in the mobile industry since 1997 in various management positions and has gained international success in product and technology development. He is an Apple Achiever and an international patent inventor for the mobile [media] application.
Mike Zuckerman, Culture Hacker, Global Migration Crisis Expert and Serial Entrepreneur
Mike creates spaces. He has designed everything from environmental nightclubs to a global network of [freespaces]. For the last 2 years Mike has turned his focus to the global human migration crisis where he has been setting up alternatives to traditional refugee camps where the refugees themselves take a leading role in their design and implementation, flipping the traditional humanitarian model.
As project manager for Elpida Home in 2016, Mike lead a team of volunteers, refugees and local Greek contractors to build a prototype camp that what was widely recognized as the most dignified living conditions for refugees in all of Greece. Since leaving Greece he has continued investigating refugee situations from integration in Europe to the protracted and new situations that exist in Uganda and Bangladesh. He looks at how the cutting edge thoughts on the future of education, work, governance, place making, blockchain and protests can be applied to advancing the cause of displaced peoples around the globe. Like many others, he believes that the current system of international aid is broken and we need to actively create many alternative prototypes and fast.
Dara Dotz, Field Ready
Dara is an Industrial Designer by training and has worked, studied, and lived in over 37 countries. When visiting rural clinics in Haiti she realized medical disposables were virtually nonexistent. She decided to reframe the supply chain problem by combining her design strategy experience and rapid ethnographic assessment to dig into the real issues and empower the local community to help themselves through disruptive technologies. She deployed the first 3D printer to Haiti and initiated the first Maker Lab run by Haitians for Haitians. She then teamed up with Eric James—who has nearly two decades of experience leading disaster relief and development projects worldwide and wrote the book on managing humanitarian relief—and they co-founded Field Ready. Dara also worked as the Human Factors lead at Made in Space, a space startup that delivered the first 3D printer to the International Space Station and manufactured the first product in orbit.
Marc Buckley, SDG Advocate, Expert Network WEF, Global Food Reformist, Inside Ideas Podcast Host, Climate Speaker, Founder, Social Entrepreneur, Author Menu B
Marc Buckley is on a mission to empower Billions of Global Citizens to live an Adaptive Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability within planetary boundaries. He is striving to reform the agriculture, food and beverage industry. He does this by speaking globally on Climate Change and Food Reform. Also by consulting and showing entrepreneurs how to build and grow resilient, sustainable, and profitable businesses. He is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of ANJA GmbH & Co. KG and the ALOHAS ECO-Center, a sustainable food and beverage production company, that creates renewable energy and resources without fossil fuels, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste. As an expert for sustainable development, he consults companies in their renewable transition with specialization in innovative systems, recycling, packaging, organics, raw, and vegan products.
Marc has spoken internationally on climate change food reform, and green business; which includes several TEDx talks and speaking engagements at World Health Summit, Global Shapers Croatia Taste and Tourism Ministry, Web Summit, TOA-Berlin, Seeds & Chips, EAT Forum, Asian Development Bank - Green Business Forum, EU Research and Innovation Summit, EU Sustainability Summit, Davos - World Economic Forum, Green Culture Forum, Kinnernet, Climate Matters TV, The Big Shift, AgTech FoodTech Summit, Innovation Hub FReSH member for World Business Council for Sustainable Development, COP 23, and OIKOS Hamburg University.
He is a Resilient Sustainable Futurist and Professor for the Green Brand Academy, who holds the role as Germany and Austria Country Coordinator for Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project. Member of Bayer Foundation Aspirin Jury Member, Member of General Thinkers Foundation, Fellow MIT Climate CoLab, Fellow Future Earth, SU Global Hub, EAT Forum, Fellow of the Water Network, and World Economic Forum.
Marc is a serial entrepreneur and has been involved in many companies as well as several international family businesses. He comes from five generations of German organic farmers and three generations of European Hydroponic Agronomists.
Claire Davies, Fabra Davies
Claire founded a new movement of first order thinking called Intuitive Branding to help people and companies to discover their inner potential and purpose. In 2008 she cofounded Fabra Davies to help build more holistic experiences for brands. She is the creative director of the award-winning agency running out of Barcelona. Claire also mentors and consults in the fields of Meaning and Experience in Brands. Clients include Amazon Web Services, The United Nations and Football Club Barcelona. In parallel, she works extensively with design brands and her design collections have been shown in exhibitions in Japan, New York, Milan, Paris, Stockholm and London. Claire trained in 3 Dimensional Architecture and is an Essential Essence Dynamics coach practioner. In her spare time, she mentors startups and female entrepreneurs. She also runs meditation circles and is an explorer of human potential.
Dr. John Realpe-Gómez, Quantum Machine Learning
Until recently, John worked as Research Scientist at the NASA Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he contributed to advanced the emerging field of quantum machine learning, and as full-time professor and researcher in the Universidad de Cartagena, Colombia. John is currently working on a career transition towards contemplative science and on the creation of a foundation to promote education access and well-being.
John earned a PhD in Physics 2011 at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, working at the interface of computer science and physics. He then joined the University of Manchester to apply physics techniques to problems in socio-economics and ecology. During this time he also did research on the foundations of quantum physics, which he continued at the Universidad de Cartagena, Colombia, and in his spare time. Only recently he has posted online a first preprint briefly summarizing some of the ideas. As part of the Diploma Programme of the Abdus Salam ICTP and the M.Sc. Program of the Universidad del Valle, Colombia, he worked on quantum game theory and on the decoherence of superconducting systems.
Judith Murray, Innovator
Judith is an innovator, entrepreneur, mentor and business consultant with extensive experience in start-ups and turn-arounds in higher education and educational technology. Uniquely qualified in on-ground, online and international higher education.
Tomas Diez, Urbanist and Co-Founder of Fab Lab
Tomas is a Venezuelan Urbanist specialized in digital fabrication and its implications in the future of cities and society. He is a co-founder of Fab Lab Barcelona http://www.fablabbcn.org at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) http://www.iaac.net, and the director of the Fab City Research Laboratory, and the Director of the Master in Design for Emergent Futures at IAAC. He leads the FAB City Global Initiative http://www.fab.city in collaboration with an international team of thinkers and makers, and the European project manager for the Fab Foundation http://www.fabfoundation.org.
Tomas holds a Bachelor degree in Urban Planning and Sociology by the University Simon Bolivar (Caracas - Venezuela), a Diploma in social work at the University of La Havana (Cuba), a Master in Advanced Architecture by IAAC, and a Diploma in Digital Fabrication from a pilot program to kickstart the Fab Academy http://www.fabacademy.org by completing the class “How to Make Almost Anything”, offered by the MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms in 2008. He works as a close collaborator in the development of the Fab Lab Network together with MIT and the Fab Foundation.
Tomas co-founded the Exploring Emergent Futures platform in the Design Products department at the Royal College of Arts in London, and is co-founder of initiatives such as the crowdsensing platform Smart Citizen http://www.smartcitizen.me, the social network FabLabs.io http://www.fablabs.io, and the artist residency StudioP52 http://www.studiop52.com; he has been the organiser and co-chair of the FAB10 Barcelona http://www.fab10.org, the 10th international fab lab conference and annual meeting hosted by Fab Lab Barcelona (IAAC) in 2014.
Tomas has been appointed by The Guardian and Nesta as one of the top 10 digital social innovators to watch in 2013 and has been awarded by the Catalan ICT association as the entrepreneur of the year in 2014. His research interests relate to the use of digital fabrication tools to transform the reality, and how the use of new technologies can change the way people consume, produce and relate to each other in cities.
HUNTER ERICKSON
“Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success." Swami Sivananda
With the promise of collaboration, sharing ideas, and positivity Hunter made a vow to do everything he can to help people find their passion that will have an impact in lives across the globe through entrepreneurship. Starting his first company while attending university, he has always had a passion for creating something from nothing and taking risks. He graduated from the University of North Dakota in Communication, as well as attending Imperial College London, and the University of North Dakota School of Law. Continuing his education, he is studying Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, and IoT to provide solutions to global issues.
David Li, Executive Director, Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab
David Li has been contributing to open source software since 1990. He is member of Free Software Foundation, committer to Apache projects and board director of ObjectWeb. In 2010, he co-founded XinCheJian, the first hackerspace in China to promote hacker/maker culture and open source hardware. In 2011, he co-founded Hacked Matter, a research hub on maker movement and open innovation. In 2015, he co-founded Maker Collider, a platform to develop next generation IoT from Maker community. He is also the executive director of Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab which facilitate the collaboration between global smart hardware entrepreneurs and Shenzhen Open Innovation ecosystem.
ERICH MISCHE
For nearly 40 years Erich has had his fingers in U.S. local, state and national politics, policy and government. A Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow, former U.S. Senate Chief of Staff, federal lobbyist, avid blogger, Executive Director of Spare Key, www.sparekey.org, very slow marathon runner and a passionate believer in anything is possible, Erich does what he can to swallow life whole. The proud father of two children, Owen and Maisie, Erich and his wife, Mary-Helen, are inspired by the enormous potential of their children, and everyone's child, to change the world. Erich has a powerful ability to bring people and ideas together and identify common goals and objectives to achieve successful vision outcomes.Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.