Dr. Eeva John
Chair
Eeva works with the Archbishops' Council of the Church of England, based in London. She researched and co-authored the feasibility study on behalf of the ECSS&S in 2011 together with Ruth Eade. While working at Trinity College Bristol she established a partnership between Trinity and Bishop Gwynne College in Juba. Previously she has worked in Ethiopia and Sudan in higher education as well as in relief and development.
During 2012-2014 Eeva worked for the Church of England to produce the Common Awards, a new national framework for theological education validated by Durham University.
Suzan Voga-Duffee
Advisory Board
Suzan is a teacher, mentor and coach, and an aspiring author; with two poems published in No Time To Mourn: An Anthology by South Sudanese Women. She is driven by motivation, dynamism, personability and a good sense of humour. Mrs. Duffee worked in higher education for many years, training teachers and liaising, coordinating, and networking with the Ministry of Education in South Sudan. Suzan currently resides in Fredericksburg, Virginia, with her husband and son.
Ron Hart
Trustee
Ron is a retired priest in the Church of England with a long association with East Africa, including teaching in Kenya in the 1960s. More recently he has been involved with SOMA and visits South Sudan regularly. He also served as a university chaplain in the UK for some years.
Advisory Board
John Wood
John has recently retired as the Secretary General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities. He is an engineer and holds a number of honorary professorships. He has served on a number of public bodies and has a long involvement in higher education internationally.
Alex Sims
Advisory Board
Alex spent the first ten years of his career in behavioural science research in Least Developed Communities, particularly in East Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan. Since then, he has worked on and designed several long-term research projects to understand the drivers behind instability. He is now Head of Partnerships at GMIS – a professional IT association of worldwide government IT leaders.
Advisory Board
Kay Hunter-Johnston
Kay is a retired solicitor who has always had a deep respect for and interest in the people of South Sudan. With SOMA she has visited South Sudan twice and a refugee camp for South Sudanese in Uganda. She is part of the team for Women on the Frontline.
Patron
Caroline Welby
Caroline is a trained Spiritual Director, has taught on Spiritual Direction courses and has a particular interest in Ignatian Spirituality.
She works alongside her husband particularly within the Anglican Communion having visited every Province with him. She has developed, with others, and leads a programme, Women on the Frontline, aimed at supporting and equipping women leaders in their ministries, especially bishops’ spouses, and seeking to resource them both spiritually and in areas of reconciliation. She has spent time with bishops’ spouses in Juba twice in this capacity.
Hanna John
Trustee
Hanna was born in Khartoum, Sudan. Her background is management consulting across retail, finance, media, pharma and non-profit sectors. She has degrees in theology from King's College London and Cambridge University and in International Development from LSE.
Anne Tutt
Advisory Board
Anne has worked as a Finance Director in both the private, public and charitable sectors. She has travelled extensively in Africa as part of her work and is currently on the Audit Committee of the Department for International Development.
Advisory Board
Stephen Spencer
Stephen Spencer is the Director of Theological Education for the Anglican Communion.He has lived and worked in Zimbabwe and has longstanding links with Tanzania. He visited South Sudan in 2018.
Advisory Board
Nic Ramsden
Nic lived in Juba from 2007-2014 working in a series of roles with the Episcopal Church of Sudan and UKAid education projects. He has worked in all of South Sudan’s 10 states as well as Khartoum and the Nuba Mountains. During his time with the UKAid Basic Services Fund (BSF) and Girls Education South Sudan (GESS) programmes he helped support a number of South Sudanese education institutions. He is now Principal Consultant at RSK, an environmental, engineering and technical services business.
Treasurer
Martin Horton
Martin is a retired chartered accountant, having worked in the water industry and for the
Audit Commission in the UK. His work took him to East Africa (Tanzania) in the 1970s. More recently he has done some short-term voluntary work for a missionary society in South Sudan in 2009. His time in Africa, and his Christian faith, have given him a great interest in mission work in Africa.