Our Team

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Our Team

Our Executive Leadership Team is comprised of a group of individuals with a wealth of experience in business, education, and non-profit disciplines. Each member has extensively lived, worked, and traveled to multiple communities, both domestically and internationally. We have witnessed first hand, the lack of educational opportunities for many children and we are passionate about helping them. Our goal is to enrich the learning environment for all children in these developing communities. We are extremely driven to contribute our respective expertise, knowledge, and time, in order to motivate others to join this journey.

Denise Allen - President and Founder
Denise is the President and Founder of Mission EduCare. Her professional career spans over 20 years in Information Systems implementing large-scale Global Systems, Program Management, and Process Improvement in the pharmaceutical, entertainment and telecommunications industry. She held various roles in Big 5 Management Consulting, Fortune 500 and Non Profit companies including PricewaterhouseCoopers, AT&T, Berlex (now Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Organon (now Schering-Plough), and Teach For America. Denise received her BBA in Computer Science from Baruch College, City University of NY and a MS from Stevens Institute of Technology in NJ.

Denise was born and raised in the Bronx, NY and lived in New Jersey most of her adult life. Both of her parents originated from the Caribbean island of Montserrat, which she first visited as a child and was her initial exposure to international communities. She is an avid traveler and has been to over 93 cities in 24 countries, including Zurich, Switzerland where she lived for a period. Denise is an active member of her church, First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, NJ, and spends a lot of time traveling and doing philanthropy activities.

Kathy Creavalle Getonga – Director of Operations, Kenya
Kathleen was born in Guyana, South America and moved to New York with her family in the early 1980’s. In 2002, Kathleen was offered a career opportunity from the UN and relocated to Nairobi, Kenya. She is currently working for the UN-Habitat located in Nairobi. Kathleen has been involved in several charity initiatives aimed at empowering school children in rural Kenya.

Kathleen’s career spans more than 20 years in Accounting, Management Consulting and Finance, and held various positions with Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the United Nations. She has a Bachelors’ Degree in Economics from Binghamton University and a MBA in International Business from Baruch College. Kathleen enjoys traveling and outdoor activities. She participated in the New York to Boston AIDS RIDE in 2002 and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 2004.

Dave Cropper – Vice President Public Relations and Strategy
Dave joins Mission EduCare with over 16 years experience in the Creative/Production Industry, successfully deploying effective marketing solutions and strategies to corporations throughout the Caribbean. At the tender age of 13, Dave started his career as an entrepreneur by painting and creating crafts for foreign export and eventually became recognized as a branding specialist throughout the Caribbean. One of Dave’s major accomplishments was the re-branding of British West Indies Airways (BWIA) by creating the logo and airplane design, when he was 23 years old.

Born and raised in the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago, Dave lived for periods in Curacao and Canada and traveled extensively throughout the Caribbean, US and Canada. He currently resides in Barbados. Dave is an accomplished photographer and film director, and graduated with a distinction from British Columbia Institute of Technology film school in Vancouver Canada. Dave’s passion to help children stems from his early years when he conducted counseling classes for the children at an orphanage. As a young business owner, he also partnered with the Trinidad government to provide internships for delinquent kids as part of the government mentorship program.

Yosef Seifu – Director of Operations, Ethiopia
Yosef joins Mission EduCare with more than 12 years of human resources management experience. He has held human resources positions with the New School University, Macmillan Publishing, and Teach For America. Yosef was the Managing Director of Operations at Teach For America and is currently the Global Director of Human Resources Information Systems at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in New York City. Yosef’s expertise spans strategic planning, business process design and implementation, and large scale operations management. He deeply believes that education is the primary catalyst for positive change in developing communities and that every child deserves access to a quality education.

 
Yosef was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and moved to the United States
with his family when he was 11 years old. He received his Bachelor of
Arts degree from the University of Virginia and his Master in Public 
Administration degree from the University of Arizona. He is also an
accomplished artist with various works in private and corporate
collections. He was selected as one of Africa’s emerging artists in
2010 by Africa Now art publication. Yosef is an avid traveler and has
visited more than 25 countries in recent years.