Board Members

Elizabeth Wasunna | Board Chair

Business Banking Director, Absa Bank Kenya PLC
Elizabeth Wasunna serves as the Business Banking Director at Absa Bank Kenya PLC. She sits on the bank’s Country Management Committee and its subsidiary bank boards, Absa Asset and Absa Bancassurance Intermediary Limited. Her banking career spans over 25 years with vast experience and skills in strategic leadership, developing and growing women in business, SME and commercial banking, and ecosystem partnerships in Africa. Elizabeth is an avid reader and uses her networks to speak on various platforms as a guest speaker, motivational speaker, and most recently, certified coach.

Sejal Shah | Treasurer

Healthcare Executive
Sejal Shah has spent over 20 years in the healthcare and life sciences industry including Astra Zeneca, Aga Khan University Hospital, Acacia Medical Centre, Nairobi Women’s Hospital, GVRC and the Goodlife chain of retail pharmacies. She served as a board member for Mimosa (now Goodlife Pharmacies) for a number of years. She was recognized for enhancing non-communicable disease awareness/diabetes by rolling out the Merck – Dora Program at the Goodlife chain of pharmacies. While actively working in the healthcare industry she involved herself with many charitable efforts such as Gender Violence Recovery Centre and Asian Foundation Initiative – Stawisha Maisha. She currently serves as a healthcare executive.

Jonathan Wareham | Board President

Professor, Department of Operations, Innovation and Data Sciences at ESADE
Jonathan Wareham is Professor/Catedrático of Information Systems of ESADE Business & Law Schools, Ramon Llull University. He previously served as Dean (Faculty & Research) and Vice Dean (Research). Dr Wareham’s research has been published, or is forthcoming, in over 80 refereed journals and proceedings such as Organization Science, Decision Sciences, MIS Quarterly, Decision Support Systems, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, IEEE Computer, Journal of Medical Internet Research, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, International Journal of Medical Informatics and numerous others.

He serves as Senior Editor of MIS Quarterly, and has held/holds editorial positions with Information Systems Research, Journal of Information Technology, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Information & Organization and Journal of Strategic Information Systems. He was the General Conference Chair of the 20th European Conference on Information Systems – ECIS 2012 and Local Organizing Chair of DRUID2 2013.

He has served as Director of the ESADE Institute for Innovation and Knowledge Management. In addition, he sits on the advisory boards for a number of academic institutions, NGOs and social entrepreneurs.

Adriana Brassart | Board Member

Head of Public Diplomacy and Press, Delegation of the European Union in the United States
Adriana Brassart is Head of Public Diplomacy and Press, Delegation of the European Union in the United States, previously Head of Office and External Relations Manager at the Institute for Integrated Transitions. Her professional background is in the foreign and development policies of the European Union. For more than five years she worked for the European External Action Service (EEAS) in Brussels as an International Policy Officer, dealing mainly with the Middle East region during the Arab Spring period. Prior to that, she managed development cooperation projects at EuropeAid, focusing on regional cooperation in Asia and Central Asia. Part of her portfolio were connectivity projects aimed at increasing internet access for education and research purposes. In the past, she also worked in management consulting with the international consulting firm Deloitte Advisory. Adriana also teaches classes about the European Union and its political processes at the Institut Barcelona Estudis Internacionals (IBEI).

Kami Dar | Board Member

Executive Vice President and Founder, Devex
Kami is an impact-focused expert on systems, automation, data analytics, and talent management in the global development sector. As co-founder and innovator-in-chief at the media platform for the global development sector, Devex, he spent nearly two decades leading a global team of analysts, researchers, engineers, and designers to deliver the world-class technologies that made Devex the definitive hub for more than a million global development professionals. He has worked closely with external development partners, including Oxfam and the World Bank, and tackled complex integrations and strategic alignment with a diverse group of technology partners and platforms that range from ERP and analytics to automation and algorithmically-driven solutions for talent management and the mapping of development activities. Earlier in his career, Kami worked on systems consulting and product deployment with the US Government at a large technology consulting firm and subsequently worked on the design and development of an M&E platform for a USAID project based in Jordan. Today Kami advises organizations engaged in large-scale system change in pursuit of the the Global Goals. He continues to serve on the Board of Directors of Devex.

Hermione Ireland | Board Chair

Managing Director, Académie du Vin Library
Hermione Ireland has worked in publishing for most of her career, with over 13 of those years at Dorling Kindersley as marketing director, working on both books and digital products. She is currently working at Hachette UK as the marketing director of Little, Brown. She also works as a consultant with publishing tech start-ups and author clients. She has been volunteering with Worldreader for six years, working on the acquisition of new UK titles and business development opportunities.

Rebecca Chandler Leege | Board Trustee

CEO of Worldreader
Rebecca Chandler Leege is Worldreader’s new Chief Executive Officer. From 2018-2023, Rebecca led Worldreader’s impact across the globe as Chief Impact Officer, helping the nonprofit reach over 22 million readers and transforming the organization’s strategy to be laser-focused on getting children reading across under-resourced communities. With more than 25 years of people-centered global leadership experience, Rebecca has a proven track record of growing innovative organizations through creative collaborations, cross-sector partnerships, and strategic vision.

More on Rebecca: https://www.worldreader.org/rebecca-leege/

Lucia Halpern | Board Trustee

Consultant & Executive Coach
After 20 years as a journalist and investment banker, Lucia Halpern is now devoted primarily to not-for-profit work. In addition to her role as a board member for Worldreader, Lucia serves as chairman of the Friends of the Courtauld Institute of Art and as a member of the Courtauld’s Investment Committee. Through the charity Kilfinan Group, she mentors chief executives of other charities. She also teaches literacy at a local primary school, a role which allows her to continue to indulge her love for children’s literature. Her professional work includes executive coaching and speechwriting. Lucia has a BA from the University of North Carolina, where she was a Morehead scholar, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Peter Mallinson | Board Trustee

Vice-Chairman, Brown Advisory Ltd
Peter is vice chairman of Brown Advisory Ltd and a member of Brown Advisory International Advisory Board. He joined CDK|Brown Advisory, a predecessor firm focused on hedge fund advisory solutions, as a senior advisor in 2005, and continues in that role today with the Brown Advisory Investment Solutions Group. Prior to this, he spent more than 20 years at Goldman Sachs International, where he was partner and managing director from 1994-2002. He is a director of Nextam Partners SGR, an Italian asset management company. Peter attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead scholar and received his BSc (Econ.) and MBA there. Peter is currently the chairman of the Governors at Wellington College, and also chairman of the Queen’s Club. He was a founding trustee of New Philanthropy Capital.

Martin Nye | Board Trustee

Chairman, World of Books
Martin Nye has had a broad-ranging business career over more than 30 years with a variety of senior management positions in a number of private and public companies. He currently has a portfolio of non-executive chairman, director, and advisory roles for several businesses, including World of Books, the largest used book retailer in Europe, and Syncreon, a leading international logistics operator. Martin is chairman of the Wiltshire Museum and a trustee of the Soil Association, the food and farming charity. He read history at the University of Cambridge.

David Risher | Board Trustee

Co-Founder & US Board Founding Chair, Worldreader
David Risher is the co-founder and founding chair of the board of directors of Worldreader. He is currently CEO of Lyft and served as an executive at Microsoft Corporation and then as Amazon.com’s first senior vice president for US Retail where he helped grow the company from a small bookstore into the world’s largest internet retailer. Following his departure from Amazon, he taught at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. He founded Worldreader in 2010 after spending a year traveling the world with his family. He is a Wilson College Honorary Doctorate recipient and a Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur awardee.

More on David: http://www.worldreader.org/david-risher/