Jon Hirst

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Jon Hirst serves as President and CEO of GMI, a research organization that helps the Global Church steward knowledge for Kingdom impact. Since growing up as a missionary kid in Argentina and Venezuela, he has been committed to serving the Global Church in creative and intentional ways. Jon is the co-editor of Innovation in Mission with Rev. Jim Reapsome and co-author of Through the River: Understanding Your Assumptions About Truth  (both published by InterVarsity Press) with his wife Mindy. They live in Colorado with their three children.

ALS Role

Jon joined the ALS Team at the point that we began to design the best way to make what we had learned available to others. In his position as head of GMI and board member of Media Associates International, Jon brought a broad view of both the digital and print components of communicating what ALS was all about to others. We are particularly excited at the potential overlap and collaboration that can be nurtured as the academic community that participated in the ALS and the mission community of GMI share information and ideas. We will continue to work with GMI developing additional materials for the “Findings Page” and the “Resource Page”.

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Rob Huff

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Rob Huff is president of ImageStudios in Franklin, TN and works with several prominent ministries such as Focus on the Family and Young Life with marketing creative, web development and social media content creation and strategy. Rob helps with web development and creative support for Africa Leadership Study.

ALS Role

Rob Huff joined our team as our website designer. His gift for design and expertise in technical issues have been a rock solid foundation for the strong seedbed website that you are enjoying as you read this. He was quick to understand the essentials of the project and our hearts desire to make what we learned as widely available as possible. The beautiful ALS logo with the “seeds flourishing in the open hand of an African” is a quintessential graphic of our prayer for leadership development in Africa.

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Evan Hunter

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Evan Hunter serves as Vice President with ScholarLeaders International, an organization that exists to encourage and enable Christian theological leaders from the Majority World for the global church. He holds a PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School where his research focused on the contextual engagement of newly developed doctoral programs in evangelical seminaries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. His work keeps him engaged with the development of Christian leaders through theological education. Evan lives near Chicago, IL with his wife and three sons.

ALS Role

Evan Hunter met regularly with the ALS leadership team, and served as an external advisor and consultant on research design and implementation and on interpreting the data. He provided input into the analysis and writing up of results.

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Joanna Ilboudo

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Dr. Joanna Ilboudo is a founder and Senior Advisor for ACTS-Burkina Faso. The ACTS programs for literacy, micro enterprise, writers training and primary and secondary education have provided her a wealth of experience and wisdom regarding leadership development. She is also the Executive Secretary of PACWA, the women commission of AEA. She has written and published the following books: Pitié pour ma soeur, Au nom de la foi, Destinée via adversité, Et si toute ma vie était louange!, Parcours de Femmes. In 2016 she was chosen to represent the evangelical church in Burkina Faso on the National Elections Committee.

ALS Role

Joanna Ilboudo served as an external advisor and consultant for the Africa Leadership Study, and met regularly with the larger leadership team. She brought her firsthand experience of the challenges faced by women leaders in Francophone Africa to the conversation.

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Shelly Isaacs

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Shelly Isaacs provided support on the Africa Leadership Study with data preparation and management. She received her M.A. in Sociology of Religion from Baylor University. Her thesis was on “Self, Stigma, and Identity Work in the Pentecostal Experience of Illness.”

ALS Role

Shelly was involved with ALS before we knew it was ALS. Her first efforts provided a critically needed assessment tool for the discernment process as we considered whether to initiate the Study. She organized and evaluated 10 years of Tyndale House Foundation grant data in a way that enabled us to see and evaluate our role in Africa at that time from an important overview perspective. Since those early days she has been a critical resource in managing, organizing and evaluating all our data. She has overseen the translation of the data and the reports, enabling them to be available in all three languages. Her experience in managing research data has informed the organization of the website and the “Data Page”. As you download the research information, you can thank Shelly.

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John Jusu

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John Jusu is a missionary of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa. He is an ordained minister of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ – Sierra Leone and has a PhD. He served as Dean of the School of Education, Arts and Social Sciences and taught in the Educational Studies Department at Africa International University. He is currently on an extended leave of absence from the university and is serving with the Overseas Council International as the Africa Regional Director.  He works extensively on transformational curriculum issues in response to the context in which formal and non-formal education happens in Africa. His expertise is in understanding the epistemological frameworks of Africans striving to go into pastoral and teaching ministries of the Church in Africa, and how that understanding may influence educational practices. John serves as curriculum consultant for the More than a Mile Deep-Global, Supervising editor for the Africa Study Bible, Senior Researcher for the Africa Leadership Study and member of the Global Associates for Transformational Education. John is also involved in faculty development for many educational initiatives in Africa.

ALS Role

John Jusu served on the Africa Leadership Study senior leadership team, attended all major sessions, helped with leadership design, and supervised a team of doctoral student research assistants. He carried out interviews and wrote up ten-page reports on key Kenyan leaders and Christian organizations. The chapter he wrote, “Developing Transformational Leaders — Curricula Implications from the Africa Leadership Study Findings,” appears in our book.

See Findings page for professional credentials and CV.

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Elisabet le Roux

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Elisabet le Roux is a Research Director at the Unit for Religion and Development Research (URDR), in the Faculty of Theology of Stellenbosch University in South Africa. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stellenbosch University, with a dissertation entitled The role of African Christian churches in dealing with sexual violence against women: the case of the DRC, Rwanda and Liberia. As a faith and development expert, she does research across the globe, focusing particularly on gender and gender-based violence.

ALS Role

Elisabet le Roux met regularly as part of the Africa Leadership Study senior leadership team. She played a key role in every stage of research design, did most of the training of research teams in Angola, and served as the principal supervisor of all research carried out in Angola. She helped with analysis of ALS research results, and co-authored two chapters in our book, “Leadership Responses During Armed Conflict” and “African Womens Leadership — Realities & Opportunities.”

See Findings page for professional credentials and CV.

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Adelaide Manuel

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Adelaide Tomas Manuel is a pastor and as an ALS researcher, she liked working with topics related to women’s development. She teaches two subjects: Christian Education and Christology at Emmanuel Seminary – Dondi (SED). From 2007 to 2015, she was the Principal of SED. She got her Master’s Degree in Practical Theology at Methodist University in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her dissertation was on the topic of the Formation of Women in Pastoral Leadership.

ALS Role

Adelaide Tomas Manuel met regularly as part of the ALS leadership team, provided input on all phases of research and analysis, and helped supervise a team of student researchers administering surveys in Angola. She conducted interviews and wrote up ten-page reports on key Angolan Christian leaders and Christian organizations.

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Kalemba Mwambazambi

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Kalemba Mwambazambi is Professor at FATEB (Faculte de Theologie Evangelique de Bangui) in the Central African Republic. He holds a PhD in Missiology from the University of South Africa in Pretoria. He is also a candidate for a Doctor of Health Sciences at Keiser University in Florida (United States of America). He does research across the globe on transformational leadership, HIV and AIDS, Christian missions, African theologies, socio-political issues, peace, justice and reconciliation. He has published academic articles in peer-reviewed journals and written several chapters in books.

ALS Role

Kalemba Mwambazambi met regularly as part of the ALS leadership team, provided input on all phases of research and analysis, and supervised a team of researchers administering surveys in the Central African Republic. He conducted interviews and wrote up reports on key Christian leaders and Christian organizations in the Central African Republic.

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David Ngaruiya

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David K. Ngaruiya is associate professor at the International Leadership University in Nairobi, Kenya. He holds a PhD in Intercultural Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.  He is also the Deputy Vice Chancellor in Research, Extension and Development, as well as the Chair of the Africa Society of Evangelical Theology (2015-2016). He has published journal and book articles and served as coeditor and contributor to the book “Communities of Faith in Africa and African Diaspora.”  His research interests include leadership, contextualization, the Church in Africa, and the use of digital resources in education.  He has supervised graduate research at various levels.

ALS Role

David Ngaruiya provided leadership in all stages of research design, in field-testing our instruments, and in mobilizing and training the larger Kenyan team of researchers. Together with Michael Bowen, he co-managed the Kenya-based project. Together with Michael Bowen and Robert Priest he traveled to Bangui, CAR to train the team of faculty and students on how to conduct the questionnaire research. He carried out interviews and prepared ten-page reports on key Kenyan leaders and organizations. He contributed a chapter “Characteristics of Influential African Christian Leaders” to our book.

See Findings page for professional credentials and CV.

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