Fellows 2014

LCL FELLOWS 2014

Fred Smith. Fred, Rev. Dr., is a Christian educator serving in communities dealing with long- term challenges and vulnerabilities. Educated at Harvard, SMU and Emory, he has worked at the foundation of the Interfaith Health Program at The Carter Center. He is the primary architect of ‘Not Even One,’ a highly creative strategy to treat every young handgun death as a "sentinel event" subject to broad community analysis to prevent the next one. He has adapted religious health assets mapping and leading causes of life into his participatory educational designs at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington DC, and been a key leader in Stakeholder Health and the congregational networks in both Memphis and North Carolina. A widely sought speaker and counselor in both religious and public health circles, he recently returned to his boyhood home, Valejo California, as a United Methodist pastor and community leader.

Marlese von Broembsen. Marlese is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law, Public Law and Institute of Development and Labour Law University of Cape Town, and Attorney of the High Court of South Africa, with a Master’s in Development Studies. Her work focuses on the nexus between poverty, informality, law and development, and draws on four years spent working with black-owned informal businesses in townships near Cape Town, as well as many years of policy work for inter- national aid agencies, South African agencies, the UCT Graduate School of Business, as well as government. She has published on South Africa’s small business development strategy, labour law and development, private sector preferential procurement, and legal empowerment of the poor. Marlese’s particular interest is in labour market institutions that potentially facilitate the unemployed poor and informal producers participating in global value chains.

Rachel Sinha. Co-founder & co-leader of The Finance Innovation Lab, UK, jointly convened by WWF-UK and Institute of Chartered accountants in England and Wales. The Lab works on systems change & social innovation, collaboration, sustainable business, large group facilitation, design thinking, finance innovation, social entrepreneurship, women in leadership, and start-up incubators. She has represented the UK on the European Commission Expert Group on Social Business, helped found The Natural Capital Coalition, and is Director at Point People, a group of 16 women who believe that large-scale impact comes from connecting disparate worlds.

Bret Nicks. Associate Professor, Emergency Medicine; Associate Dean, Global Health at
Wake Forest School of Medicine; Chief
Medical Officer, Wake Forest Baptist Health Lexington and Davie Medical Centers. His interests include Emergency Medicine development, global health integration in re- source austere settings, and Community/Health System partnerships. He has key relationships with colleagues in Tanzania and Nicaragua, and has been a Lead educator and care provider in more than 15 countries worldwide with numerous NGO and governmental organizations. Outdoor and wilderness activities are a particular passion of Bret’s, as are ethnic foods, and family life. Coming from a disadvantaged background, Bret is motivated by a desire to serve others regardless of situation or circumstance.

Doug Reeler. Doug (BA, MA), an anthropologist and historian, works with the Community Development Resource Association (cdra.org.za), designing and facilitating processes for social change and transformation. He coordinates the Barefoot Guide Connection (barefootguide.org), and the Letsema Programme in South Africa, mobilising caregivers of young children to bring their voice, leadership and initiative to co-creative processes with government, community and other actors, for the well-being of young children – a foundation for future national sustainability. Skilled in adult education and organisation development, Doug plays traditional Shona music on the marimba and mbira. ‘Optimistic and naïve,’ he has great faith in the power of mutual learning as the basis for co-creative endeavor, a more human and fulfilled life.

Horst Kleinschmidt. Horst, ‘retired’ but remains a very busy social activist, also researches Southern African History, German Colonial History, human rights and related matters. He has a long and deep history of political engagement against Apartheid in South Africa, and in building a free and just society since. He worked as Assistant to Beyers Naude, Director of the Christian Institute of SA (banned in 1977), and in exile, was head of the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa in London for 10 years. On returning to SA, he worked with Lawyers for Human Rights, Kagiso Trust (a major development funding organisation in Johannesburg), Mvula Trust (implementing water and sanitation supply in rural villages), and as a Civil Servant as the Head of the Fisheries section in Government (initially employed to investigate corruption and malpractices). Still very active in civil society for a more equal and just society, Horst is optimistic that people can change if given education, self-awareness and exposure.

Heidi Christensen. Heidi, MTS, is the Associate Director for Community Engagement at the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. Heidi’s efforts focus on building the capacity of faith-based and community organizations to be agents of health care and education on wellness and preventive practices. This effort includes the First Lady’s Let’s Move Faith and Communities initiative to create access to healthy and affordable food and increase physical activity. She also partners with a national hospital health system learning collaborative, Stakeholder Health, to develop innovative models for engaging faith and community networks in increasing health outcomes and addressing the social and economic issues challenging the health of our nation’s communities. Previously, at Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty (CIFA), she helped to create a network of US faith leaders and their communities to support collaborative efforts on malaria and other health issues affecting the developing world. As a result, CIFA produced the strategic framework report, Many Faiths, Common Action: Increasing the Impact of the Faith Sector on Health and Development. Heidi has also managed communications and event production for the Cathedral College of Washington National Cathedral. She holds a master’s degree in systematic theology and is a practicing visual artist exhibiting her work in the Washington, DC and Boston area.

Leslie London. Professor in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Cape Town, Leslie is a physician with a strong occupational, environmental and public health focus ori- ented toward civil society participation and agency in realizing the Right to Health. After a few years working for Trade Union- linked health services before moving to UCT, he ‘shifted from being a very quantitative epidemiologist to thinking about how to integrate human rights into Public Health practice.’ Leslie, for whom social justice is fundamental and persistence a vir- tue, believes that ‘we should constantly struggle to help to create a better world – which IS possible.’ He lives this metaphorically by cycling, falling off bicycles, and getting back on again.

Evance Kalula. Evance (LLB, LLM, PhD; Rhodes Scholar, Balliol College, Oxford) is Director of the International Academic Programmes Office and Confucius Institute, University of Cape Town. He also holds a personal chair as Professor of Employment Law and Social Security. Among many appointments and consultancies, he is or has been human rights fellow and external collaborator in the ILO in Geneva, Switzerland, and African Programme coordinator for Rights and Humanity in London, on the Ministerial Economic Advisory Panel in the Department of Economic Development, President of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association, a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa, on the Board of the Children’s Institute at UCT, the advisory board of the Labour Law and Development Research Laboratory, McGill University (Montreal). He served as chair of the SA Employment Conditions Commission (2000-2011), on the governing Councils of the Universities of Cape Town and University of Lusaka, Zambia, the advisory board of the Tourism and Business Institute of Southern Africa, and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Commission of Inquiry into complaints of non-observance by Zimbabwe of freedom of association and collective bargaining conventions, 2008-2010.

Malusi Mpumlwana. Bishop of the Ethiopian Episcopal Church, Malusi aims at ‘an all-inclusive African church experience whose spirituality empowers the weak … and engages the social and economic realities of our time for the common good.’ He is chair of the Ubuntu-Botho Churches’ Trust, on the Board of TrustAfrica (a Senegal-based, supporting civil society organizations in Africa), and serves as General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches. He trained at the Federal Theological Seminary and the University of Cape Town and has an honorary doctorate from Nelson Mandela Metro University. Until 2006, he was the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Southern Africa Regional Director.

Craig Stewart. Craig has degrees in Zoology and International Development. At first a high school science educator, he is now the CEO of The Warehouse Trust in Cape Town, a very active and highly respected faith based community development organization engaged in community development and community-based advocacy. He is interested in the application of complexity and systems thinking to the work of community development along with a passion for leadership development. Craig most recently has developed a growing curiosity about water, sanitation and hygiene related issues which brings together his academic fields of study. Calling himself ‘a reasonably gregarious extrovert with a need for regular silence and times of solitude,’ Craig also loves mountain biking and camping in the mountains. He is motivated by the belief that ‘in wholeness of my life I can work towards the establishment of shalom [human thriving] in the world around me.’