About Us

Carole Wainaina served as Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources Management at the United Nations between 2014-2017. She is currently Chief Operating Officer for the Africa50 Infrastructure Fund. Ms. Wainaina brings a wealth of global experience at various senior leadership levels including human resources strategy, leadership development, change management and driving organizational transformation.  She has over two decades of national and international, corporate and non-profit leadership experience, having served as the Chief Human Resources Officer and member of the Executive Committee at Royal Phillips in the Netherlands from 2011 to 2014.

Previous to that she worked at the Coca-Cola Company as Group Human Resources Director, Europe, and held various progressively responsible positions, also at the Coca-Cola Company based in Turkey, United States, United Kingdom and Kenya.

Ms. Wainaina also served as Chief of Staff to the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta and as President of the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation.  She started her career as a Management Consultant at Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Kenya and also served as the Special Assistant to the Director of the Kenya Wildlife Service.

Born in Kenya in 1966, Ms. Wainaina has a Bachelor of Business from the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, majoring in Human Resources Management and Marketing.

William has over three decades of work experience at a leadership level across the public, private and non-profit sectors. His exposure includes stints in the Government of Kenya, The Coca-Cola Company, and the African Union. He currently serves as Vice President of the Africa Regional Office for The Rockefeller Foundation. William oversees all the Foundation’s operations and programs in the region including the Foundation’s work in ending energy poverty, health, and food, which are instrumental in bettering the lives of communities across Africa.

His extensive experience in multiple sectors gives him a unique ability to navigate different cultures, align incentives and draw on the strengths of various actors to solve large-scale development challenges. Today William is working to deploy philanthropic capital to attract private-sector commercial investment and align public-sector resources to help end energy poverty in Africa by 2030 and lift the incomes of millions of farmers across the continent. He is also working on using the Rockefeller Foundation’s convening power to bring together Governments, development partners, and the private sector to ensure equitable and efficient COVID-19 vaccine delivery in Africa at both the continental and national levels. 

William is an avid advocate for efficient and sustainable economic development in Africa. He firmly believes that Africa will only truly transform when its growth story stops being Africa Rising and starts to be Africans Rising. He believes development is multifaceted and must take a multi-sectoral approach and strongly emphasize women and youth for it to be sustainable and impactful.

Douglas R. Baker is Chief Financial Officer at Learning Care Group, a position he has held since September 2017.

As CFO, Baker leads Learning Care Group’s Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions and Real Estate functions in addition to its strategic growth initiatives as the company furthers its leadership role among childcare providers through educational excellence and outstanding customer service.

Baker’s career encompasses more than 25 years of leadership experience as a global senior finance and operating executive.  Previously, he served as Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer at Discovery Networks International (DNI), a division of Discovery Communications.  He joined Discovery Communications in 2005 as Senior Vice President and CFO for Discovery Commerce.  He went on to serve as Senior Vice President and CFO for Emerging Networks, New Media and Business Development and as Executive Vice President and CFO for DNI before assuming his most recent role.  Prior to that, Baker served in a variety of financial, operating and strategic leadership roles within Hallmark Cards and The Picture People, a strategic retail venture of Hallmark.

Baker earned an MBA in Operations Management from the University of Missouri – Kansas City and a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Miami University (Ohio).

Jack Fields is the CEO of Twenty-First Century Group (TFCG), a one-of-a-kind boutique political consulting firm. Prior to the founding of TFCG, Fields represented the 8th District of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1980 to 1997. He served on the powerful Committee on Energy and Commerce from 1982 to 1997, and in 1995, became chairman of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance. During his tenure, Fields was responsible for the enactment of the landmark 1996 Telecommunications Act, and passage of both the National Securities Markets and Improvements Act and the Securities Litigation Reform Act. He was also deeply involved in national maritime, fisheries, energy, and environmental policy while serving as the Ranking Minority Member on the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries.

In addition to serving as chair of the Board of Discovery Learning Alliance, Fields sits on the Board of Directors of Invesco, the eighth largest mutual fund company in the United States, and Insperity (NYSE: NSP), a premier professional employer organization with clients nationwide.

Fields earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in 1974, and his Juris Doctor degree from Baylor Law School in 1977.

Willard O. Freeman has more than 25 years of experience in representing numerous developers, corporations, law firms and government agencies in complex real estate transactions. He successfully completed the leasing of 800 Ninth Street, SW to the General Services Administration; the acquisition, development and project management of the 550,000 square-foot Discovery Communications Headquarters in Silver Spring, MD; and the relocation of city offices to make way for development of the MCI Center in the East End of downtown Washington.

In addition, Willard has completed numerous transactions in major cities across the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and southeast Asia. Willard has participated in various joint venture developments, including retail conversions to office space and assembling commercial property in enterprise zones.

Willard is also co-founder of Freeman Group, which now operates as the Washington, D.C. area office of Concordis Advisors. Willard’s managerial expertise includes serving as regional president for the Galbreath Company of Ohio, an organization absorbed into the company now operating as Jones Lang LaSalle. Throughout his career, Willard has been consistently recognized as one of the top ten brokers in the Washington, D.C. area.

Mark Hollinger is a a veteran of over 35 years as an executive and lawyer in the media industry.  He worked at Discovery Communications for 24 years in multiple business and legal roles, including serving as General Counsel, Chief Operating Officer and, for his last 5 years at the company, as President and CEO for Discovery Networks International (DNI).  During his tenure, Hollinger oversaw the strategic development and daily operations of a division that distributed 44 entertainment brands in 45 languages, reaching more than 1.6 billion subscribers in 224 countries and territories worldwide.  It was the first international pay television business to generate $1 billion of operating profits.

Before joining Discovery, Hollinger was a senior associate in the entertainment department of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York City. He also lectured on entertainment law at Columbia Law School. Hollinger received his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School and holds a Bachelor of Arts (summa cum laude)in history and political science from Colgate University.

He currently serves as a member of the board of Corus Entertainment, a Canadian media company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.  He served for 3 years on the board of Discovery Education, a for-profit education business spun off from Discovery Communications.  He is also engaged in film and television production through his company Pleasant Bay Pictures.

Gail Ifshin knows Impact(Ed) quite well. The organization got its start when Gail was asked to begin exploring ways to leverage the media assets of Discovery Communications in support of education in the developing world. With the backing of Discovery’s leadership, that effort evolved into a global nonprofit organization that 15 years later, when Gail retired, was active in 16 countries, with a concentration in Africa. Fueled by partnerships in the public, nonprofit and private sectors, it developed a proven track record of self-sustaining, locally-anchored grassroots education and teacher training initiatives and high-impact video production that continues to this day. 

Today Gail serves as president of Everybody Grows, an urban gardening nonprofit that inspires and equips individuals living in underserved urban areas to grow their own vegetables. She is also a beekeeper.

Gail has a Ph.D. in economics, and past professional activities include work at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in the International Finance Division, two years as a staff economist in the White House, at the Council of Economic Advisers, and service on the Advisory Committee on Emerging Democracies at the US Department of Agriculture.

Bill Irwin is a retired Chevron executive and has been an Impact(Ed) director since 2006. He joined Chevron in 1981 as an engineer in Bakersfield, California and moved through several domestic locations and assignments in reservoir engineering and economic evaluation before commencing international work in 1990. Bill has supported operations and development in West Africa, SE Asia, and South America, and the UK North Sea, including long residential stints overseas. 

After sixteen years and seven residential locations, Bill shifted to a policy focus while managing International Government Affairs at Chevron’s Washington DC office. This involved keen awareness of the energy industry at a macro level and its intersection with the global geopolitical and socio-economic arenas. Key responsibilities included think-on-one’s feet ability to communicate about these intersections at both technical and lay levels to a wide spectrum of audiences including senior US and foreign government officials, environmental and developmental NGOs, and the general public.

 Bill retired in 2014 and continues to reside in Washington DC, obtaining environmental and naturalist certifications and volunteering with local watershed and social-equity groups.

Aric Noboa serves as Co-CEO and Executive Producer of Impact(Ed) International. While overseeing finance, HR, and administration, Aric leads Impact(Ed)’s efforts to create measurable change through educational media, entertaining movies, television and radio programs – engaging tens of millions of people around education, life skills, gender equity, the environment, and public health. Aric has created award-winning documentaries, animated series, talk shows and feature films. Reaching a cumulative audience of over 800 million people, these productions have received industry honors and festival awards including the 2021 Peabody Nominee, Shaina, and 2022 Emmy Award-winning series My Better World.

Aric also established the Transformational Media for Social Impact Leadership Summit at St.George’s House Windsor Castle.

Tamela Noboa serves as Co-CEO of Impact(Ed). Tamela drives Impact(Ed)’s strategic direction, leads innovative efforts to take successful initiatives to scale, and forges new partnerships to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal for universal quality education. She created a unique $64 million public/private partnership between Discovery Communications and the UK Department for International Development to improve learning outcomes for marginalized girls in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria.

With over 20 years of international development experience, Tamela is focused on improving learning and life outcomes through locally led initiatives, public private partnerships, media, technology, teacher training and community engagement. She previously served on the board of directors for Pact International, the Millions Learning International Advisory Panel and the Varkey Global Girls’ Education Alliance.

Elisabeth Rice is an Associate Professor of Special Education and Disability Studies at the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at The George Washington University. Currently, Dr. Rice coordinates the department’s doctoral program and co-coordinates a graduate teacher education program focusing on empowering and serving neurodiverse learners. Her research interests and publications focus on girls with learning and behavioral challenges and effective school/university partnerships. A former classroom teacher, Dr. Rice specializes in preparing educators to effectively teach and advocate for all students- particularly for students with learning and behavioral challenges. Additionally, with the support of doctoral students in her department, Dr. Rice has led an effort to increase access and inclusion for all learners in higher education.