Helene served as an Urban Community Development Peace Corps Volunteer in Barranquilla, Colombia from 1968-70 and as a Small Business Development volunteer in Slovakia from 1997-1999. She is a former member of the National Peace Corps Association Board of Directors, former chair of its Micro-Enterprise Program and has served on the board of directors of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of South Florida and Friends of Colombia. In 2007, Peace Corps Director Ron Tschetter presented Helene with a Presidential lifetime service award for her on-going commitment to service and Peace Corps values. In 2013, she received the Lillian Carter Award from President Jimmy Carter. She has a B.A. from St. Louis University and a Masters in Management Information Systems from Florida International University. In 2008 she retired after 22 years in Miami-Dade County government and six years with state government in Illinois and Florida. 

Helene is a founding member of The Colombia Project- TCP Global and 2019-20 President of the Rotary Club of Coconut Grove.

Zachary Coen first connected with TCP Global as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia when he facilitated the launch of a TCP Global community microloan program in his Peace Corps site of Aracataca in 2019.  Upon returning home from Colombia, he deepened his relationship with the organization by spearheading a project to improve the loan reporting and data analysis capabilities of the organization, eventually joining the Board of Directors in 2020.  Zachary is currently an MBA Candidate at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he is pursuing opportunities in FinTech with the goal of improving the access and flow of capital to emerging markets around the world. 

Andrew Koch, a TCP Board Member since 2018, is currently an MBA Candidate at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. From 2016-2018, Andrew served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia in the Community Economic Development sector where he advised local NGO, 'La Olla Milagrosa', in its launch of a TCP micro-loan program. Andrew also has professional experience in private equity, venture capital, and entrepreneurship in Latin America and the US. Andrew holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Wake Forest University. 

Shea served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia from 2018 to 2020. Serving in the Community Economic Development sector, he advised numerous entrepreneurs, taught financial literacy education in two high schools, and partnered with the Chamber of Commerce of Cartagena to formalize local businesses in his rural Caribbean site. Shea studied Finance and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning his Bachelor of Business Administration in 2018. He also has experience in youth development, legislative affairs, and community organizing.

Curt is a data professional with an MS in Business Analytics (’16) from the College of William and Mary. Before serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer, he worked as a developer in Washington, D.C. and as a data scientist at a youth non-profit in Wilmington, DE. Curt was as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia from 2019 to 2020. He served as a Community Economic Development Volunteer in southern Magdalena where he supported a local NGO with its micro-loan program funded by TCP Global.

Joshua served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia from 2018 to 2020 as a Community Economic Development volunteer. While there, he worked with a local organization that was implementing TCP Global’s micro-credit program. Joshua graduated from Saint Louis University with a bachelor’s of science in Economics.

As a Mentor Program Coordinator for TCP, Joshua helps link organizations in communities around the world that fall under TCP Global’s purview with current and former Peace Corps Volunteers in order to establish a micro-credit program and create a mentorship between the two. He facilitates the preparation of the mentor, enabling him or her to be a system of support for the local organization, and acts as a point of contact for TCP Global.

Michelle served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal from 1990-1992 teaching and training teachers. She graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University with a degree in English Literature and a minor in Economics. She has worked in Global Education at the World Affairs Council of Northern California and CGI in Chicago. For the past 20 years she has represented the US overseas in Bangladesh, Germany, Jerusalem, Switzerland and France. Michelle joined the TCP Global Board of Directors in 2019 and facilitates communications with the projects in Nepal.

Founding member of The Colombia Project. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in  Palmira, Valle de Cauca - Colombia from 1973 to 1974. Tim served as an education volunteer from 1973-74 at the Centro International de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) teaching communication and technical English to graduate students from South America, Central America, and Africa who were earning post-graduate certificates in agriculture. One day per week, he also taught English as a Second Language SENA in Buga. During his last six months in Colombia, he worked as the Volunteer Leader of the Education Program. Tim earned his bachelor’s degree in Public Address and Group Communication at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, an M.Ed. and Ph.D. in Psychology at Loyola University of Chicago, and a Master’s in Public Health at Florida International University. Tim had a long career at Miami Veterans Affairs Healthcare System as Director of Training for Psychology Service and as the facility’s Designated Learning Office before taking a position as a psychologist with Peace Corps in 2010.

Elyse Magen served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia in the Community Economic Development sector.  While in the Peace Corps, she worked closely with a farming cooperative and assisted them with setting up TCP Global.  Elyse has spent significant time in Latin America both studying abroad in Argentina and interning at the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador. She is interested in economic development issues in Latin America, specifically the intersection of gender, poverty, health, and the environment. She graduated from Tulane University with a degree in both Economics and Environmental Studies. 

Rita Novak served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia from 1973-1975, in Fusagasuga, Cundinamarca. Working in partnership with the Federacion Nacional de Cafeteros and the Comite de Cafeteros de Cundinamarca, Rita’s focus was developing and supporting women’s groups by offering programs in nutrition, home economics, and healthy families. She also oversaw an innovative project in which women from remote areas were trained in sewing, with the expectation that they would return to their communities and teach their neighbors to sew. The skills acquired also permitted them to sell their products locally.

After returning from Colombia, Rita attended law school. She received a J.D. from DePaul University and an LL.M. from Columbia University. As a lawyer, Rita worked primarily in the public or non-profit sector, serving many years in the Illinois Attorney General’s office. She was also a law professor at Indiana University at Indianapolis and directed a project for the American Bar Association designed to curb litigation delays in the appellate process.

In 1997, Rita became a judge in the Circuit Court of Cook County, in Chicago. She served in a number of divisions of the court, including Child Protection, Law and Chancery. She has been an active  volunteer in professional and civic organizations. She retired from the bench in 2016.

One of her goals in retirement was to become more involved in the work of TCP Global. Although she had been a member of Friends of Colombia and a donor to TCP Global and the Colombia Project for a number of years, she hoped to take on addition responsibilities. Rita is a new member of the Advisory Team and excited to be part of the team.

Chris Roesel grew up in rural Georgia before the Civil Rights Act, upset and confused by the segregated systems. Trying to understand, he attended a seminary and the Air Force Academy before becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala in 1973. Despite his background, he was shocked by the conditions, government, and US actions he saw in Guatemala and felt his efforts to improve conditions were insignificant. He got an MS in nutrition, an international public health degree, reviewed and analyzed the best health projects in the world, and then worked in Asia, Africa, South and Central America, Haiti, and 11 states, creating, managing, and evaluating programs. Afterwards, he studied leadership, management, whole systems change, civil engineering, journalism, and political science, searching how to be more effective in improving lives.

Chris is dedicated to ensuring the poorest have access to resources, information, respect, inclusion in decision-making, and clear processes because he has concluded those are what ensure people have a chance and a choice in life, rather than being condemned to just struggling to survive. He works in a needy community every year.

Kenney Tran is an MPA student at the Evans School of Policy and Governance at the University of Washington. He served in Colombia as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Community Economic Development sector, working alongside various agencies such as the Department of Education, local high schools, and advised a start-up NGO called "Semillas por la Paz", the  TCP micro-loan program in a rural annex of his town. Kenney holds a double degree in Political Science and Social Justice from Merrimack College where he graduated in 3 years.

Mark Aledda served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Medellin, Colombia from 1973-1975 working with small businesses and credit cooperatives.  Mark graduated from Boston College with an undergraduate degree in Business Administration, and also holds an MBA from the Thunderbird School of International Management. Mark worked for over 30 years in International Banking, including overseas assignments in Chile and Mexico, and spent the final 6 years of his career at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, before retiring in 2016.  He has been an active TCP committee member since 2009.

Jerry Fickel was an agriculture program volunteer in Peace Corps Colombia during 1967-1969 in the northern department of Bolivar. Fickel was first assigned to PINA, a human nutrition program and later worked with SENA, a vocational education program, together with the INCORA land reform project at Marialabaja. Fickel's primary efforts were directed toward teaching farmers methods of handling and raising cattle.

Fickel is a graduate of Kansas State University in Animal Husbandry with graduate studies in animal reproduction. His career, by combining his education with Peace Corps experience, has been one of sales of breeding cattle and genetic products throughout Latin America.

Fickel resides in Miami and is on the board of other not-for-profits, The Ministry of The Good Shepherd, which provides nutrition and community development projects in Peru, Alticultura, which records climate change on farms at high altitude in Guatemala and seeks crops adapted to the changes, and Empowered Youth, a program to give inner-city boys in Miami a second chance. He volunteers with the local St. Vincent de Paul Society to visit and assist the poor and is a member of the Hialeah-Miami Lakes Rotary Club . Jerry has visited three of the micro-loan sites in Colombia, participated in the 2009 Micro-Loan Micro-Summit in Cartagena and assisted with Colombia Project workshops in La Victoria in 2012.

George Gonzalez is a founding member of Mission Ninos de Colombia (MINICOL) which provides scholarships and other types of support for primary education for children from marginalized families  in impoverished communities throughout  Colombia. The Colombia Project and MINICOL began to work together in 2007 when George joined the TCP board. As of 2013, MINICOL administrators in six sites provide Colombia Project micro-loans. George is originally from Barranquilla and his wife, Noralba, is from Pereira. They live in Miami and make regular due-diligence visits to the MINICOL sites in Colombia and also maintain phone contact with the administrators on a regular basis. George and Noralba, through MINICOL, arranged workshops where the TCP administrators shared best practices in 2009, 2010 and 2012.

Kiki Mutis was born in Colombia and has lived in Miami since 1981. She received a Bachelors of Art in Environmental Studies and Master of Science in Environmental Science from Florida International University after completing the Peace Corps Master International Program. Kiki Mutis worked as a Natural Resource Volunteer in Bolivia from 1999- 2001. 

Kiki has been a member of The Colombia Project Board since 2004 and has traveled to Colombia to meet program administrators and visit micro-loan sites in order to better understand their front-line concerns. Kiki often handles the SKYPE communications with partners in Colombia. 

Kiki currently works as the Community Outreach Coordinator at Fairchild Tropical Garden Since 2004 she has been an active Member of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of South Florida and volunteers with RPCV events such as organizing the annual Everglades National Park Trip. During the last four years Ms. Mutis has worked in the planning and implementation of the annual Everglades Trip. She recruits naturalist from local environmental organizations who volunteer to guide homeless and migrant farm-worker children thru the trails of the park. She contacts and works closely with National Park staff to ensure that the Everglades outing will be successful. 

Kiki sits on the board of the Environmental Education Providers and umbrella organization for organizations providing a vast assortment of environmental education to the greater Miami Dade community. She also leads excursions for Miami Dade College, Earth Ethics Institute. 

Will is an entrepreneur and concept designer with an MBA from the University of Texas at El Paso. He served as a business development Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine ('13-'14) and a Response Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia('16). During his service in Colombia — Will supported the development of a community non-profit (PROEDUPAZ) which later became a TCP Global partner. PROEDUPAZ continues to serve their community with micro loans and small business training while mentoring other TCP Global programs in the region. 

Sally spent part of her childhood in Cali, Colombia. She was an ETV volunteer who originally trained for Uruguay and completed her Peace Corps Service in Cucuta, Colombia and the surrounding region of the Santanderes from 1967-69.  

Sally is now in private practice as a psychologist in Miami and joined The Colombia Project Board in 2008. Sally participated in the 2012 workshops in La Victoria, Colombia where she met all of The Colombia Project administrators and visited nearby micro-entrepreneurs.

Balazs Vandor is a project management and process improvement professional living in Miami. His Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech is a great match to his personality, always looking for ways to accomplish goals more efficiently. He also holds a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Balazs is originally from Hungary, growing up there and in Italy and moving to the US in high school. His passion about the environment started with canoe camping trips during his university years, but really blossomed once moving to South Florida. At first he volunteered doing mangrove habitat restoration with canoes. Nowadays, at least twice a week you will find him biking to outrigger canoe practice. Balazs has also participated in numerous beach clean-up, invasive plant removal and native tree planting events as well as wildlife rescues. He has been an active TCP committee member since 2014. In 2020 he visited two loan sites in Colombia with his partner Kiki Mutis.