George Moran
George Moran (Yale ’11) served as the Chief Operating Officer for ELI Africa, overseeing day-to-day activities at home. A rising senior, George majors in history and is a member of the men’s Heavyweight Crew team. Since the beginning of his sophomore year, George has taught in New Haven middle schools as a Community Health Educator, serving as a CHE group head in his junior year. Haling from Greenwich, CT, George attended the Brunswick School before coming to Yale.
Jason Guss – Chief Operating Officer
Jason Guss (Yale ’12) managed the Finance, public Relations, and Program Development teams to ensure timely realization of organization goals. A junior, Jason is a political science major and member of the Yale Ski Team. He is a native of Palm Springs, California.
Nick Simmons – Chief Financial Officer
Nick Simmons (Yale ’11) led the personal fundraising efforts to maintain and expand ELI Africa’s educational programs by meeting with and contacting individual donors. A senior, Nick is a political science major, though he also maintains a strong interest in economics. Nick has been an active mentor in the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Connecticut since 2008. During Nick’s time as a defensive lineman on the Yale Varsity Football, he and Vedant discussed the early ideas for forming a charitable organization to help underprivileged students in Africa.
Prior to college, Nick attended the Brunswick School in Greenwich, CT; he was the school’s only two-time All-American wrestler in the school’s history.
Elizabeth Ralph – Director of Strategy and Development
Elizabeth Ralph (Yale ’11) worked closely with the rest of the board to oversee the growth and development of the organization and to determine how best to make the organization’s plans a reality. At Yale, Elizabeth is a history major, a racer for the Alpine Ski Team, has served on student government and has acted in several theater productions. She took last year off to, among other things, retrace Hannibal’s campaign over the Alps. Elizabeth attended the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania where she was valedictorian, student body president, and captain and four year member of the Varsity lacrosse and field hockey teams.
Dan Diamond – Director of Public Relations and Marketing
Dan Diamond (Yale ’10) headed the public relations and marketing side of ELI Africa by drafting documents and other materials for release on the web and in print. Dan works to increase the charity’s public visibility in order to raise awareness and support for ELI Africa’s experiential education initiatives. A senior history major, he will begin law school in the fall of 2011 at Columbia University. Dan has previously served as his fraternity’s philanthropy chair, for which he led a number of charitable projects in association with groups including the American Cancer Society and Habitat for Humanity. Before Yale, Dan attended Redwood High School in Larkspur, California, where he received academic honors, including the Bank of America Award for Top Liberal Arts Student.
Alex Peterson – Chief Program Officer
Alex Peterson brings a breadth of experience to ELI Africa’s young family. Alex spent three years in Ghana as a member of the Peace Corps. Among Alex’s accomplishments in Ghana, he designed and implemented a curriculum and training for 120 other Peace Corps Volunteers and 240 Ghanaian Counterparts on HIV and Gender issues. For ELI Africa, Alex continues to works in the same vein to design and implement our educational initiatives. Alex has streamlined our Summer Fellow recruitment and pre-trip training programs. Additionally, he has developed the strategy and necessary curriculum to implement a yearlong ELI Fellows program and the establishment of a permanent center in Mauritius to open in the summer of 2011.
In addition to running ELI Africa’s program development, Alex is currently pursuing graduate studies at the Yale Divinity School and serves as a Teaching Fellow for Yale Undergraduate classes. Before Yale Divinity School, he graduated Cum Laude from Trinity University with a Bachelors Degree in Political Science and Religion.