Dr. Douglas Christensen, Chairman of the Malaika Foundation Board of Directors, 30 year Nebraska teaching career, Nebraska Superintendent of the Year, 1990, Emeritus Commissioner of Education, Head State Team Coach in advising State Agencies in implementation of the new Common Core State Standards, Professor of Practice in Education Leadership, Doane College. Extensive research and publications, including Curriculum Planning, High Performance Learning and Schools for our Future. He was graduated from the Midland Lutheran College, B.A.) and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Dr. Hahn worked with United Nations programs for nearly 40 years, primarily in Africa. Her work involved introducing new food crops and nutrition with the Institute for International Agriculture in Nigeria, women and finance with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, youth initiatives with the Food and Agriculture Organization, UNICEF Representative to Malawi and Senior Private Sector Advisor at the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships.

For her work in Africa, she received two honorary chieftaincy titles, in Malawi and Nigeria. She was graduated from the University of Nebraska, B.A., The Ohio State University, M.A. and Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, MPA, and The College of Education, Ed. D. Dr. Hahn has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Nebraska Wesleyan University. In order to give back to her home state, she founded the Malaika Foundation with a mission to globalize Nebraska education. She is a native of Polk and now resides in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Alicia Dallman Shoemaker attended one of the last remaining one-room schoolhouses on the Nebraskan prairie and is a first-generation college graduate. Before serving as a secondary and university educator in the U.S., she lived and taught in South American and European countries. She has also traveled extensively and taken students to many international locations.

As a tech and above all global connection enthusiast, she engages students with in-person and virtual guests aligned to linguistic proficiency goals and ICC curricula. She is currently a language learning advocate, Spanish teacher, president of the Malaika Foundation, and a language education champion for scholars and educators. She is a United States Next Generation Global Leadership Coalition Nebraska Representative, 2024 ACTFL National Teacher of the Year, and a 2025 Midlands Business Journal 40 Under 40 Awardee.

Kevin Witte has taught social studies (AP Human Geography, AP World History, and philosophy) at Kearney High School in Kearney, Nebraska since 2000. Kevin has a B.A. in social sciences secondary education and M.A. in curriculum and instruction from Doane College, as well as an M.A. in history from the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Teaching AP World History has led him into leadership roles at the AP World History Reading and on the AP World History Test Development Committee. Passionate about professional learning for teachers, Kevin has led workshops and summer institutes for AP World teachers as a Lead Consultant for the course.

Kevin has participated in fellowships, study programs, and delegations supported by the Fulbright Commission, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Geographic, and the US Department of State. He is passionate about empowering young people as citizen diplomats and problem solvers. He was named a Global Educator MELBA Award winner by the Malaika Foundation in 2012, a Milken Educator Award recipient in 2013, and awarded the GEON Bertolas, Gildersleeve, Stoddard, and Stone Award for Service to Geographic Education in Nebraska in 2025.

Charles Ahovissi is a professional artist, dancer, drummer, choreographer, educator, stage costume designer and tailor. He is an approved teaching and performing artist through the Nebraska and Iowa Art Councils. Charles began his dancing career in 1984 when he joined the National Ballet Company of Benin, West Africa. In 1987, Charles left the National Ballet and joined the Super Anges Dance Troop that toured extensively throughout the world performing and teaching traditional African dance and music.

In 2006, Charles established ACC. This organization provides Charles the freedom to share his knowledge and love of Africa through traditional dancing, drumming and arts to foster a better understanding of Africa’s diverse and beautiful cultures. Charles and ACC promote unity by offering students social and physical activity through dancing and drumming during public performances, school assemblies, residencies and workshops.

Joseph M. Debebe, PhD, is an environmental and agricultural scientist with more than three decades of experience in agronomy, seed science, soils, wetlands, and natural resource management. He earned his PhD in Agronomy from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and has held senior technical and leadership roles with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Bureau of Land Management, private research organizations, and international consulting programs.

His work spans NEPA compliance, wetland delineation, watershed and conservation planning, and advanced seed technology, with particular expertise in seed dormancy mechanisms, vigor enhancement, and seed priming systems. Earlier academic training also included focused study of medicinal plants during nursing school, providing an interdisciplinary perspective that links plant science, cultivation practices, and applied human health knowledge. This integrated background allows Dr. Debebe to support the successful propagation, cultivation, and sustainable management of medicinal and specialty crops using sound agronomic and environmental principles.

Dr. Debede is the founder and CEO of JMD Environmental Consulting, jmdenvironmental.com

Dr. Beth Doll is a retired professor of School Psychology in UNL's Department of Educational Psychology. She began her career as a school psychologist in rural Kentucky and then a clinic coordinator at the University of Wisconsin Madison – experiences that afforded insights into the mental health needs of children that she applied successfully in her research on topics spanning children’s friendships to the pragmatics of measuring student perceptions of classroom climate.

Dr. Doll's principal research interest is the promotion of mental health and the psychological well-being of children and youth and aspects of school and classroom systems that contribute to students’ resilience and academic success. Her work occured in partnership with school districts to use student perceptions and classroom data to prompt revised classroom routines. Her developmental investigations of students’ psychological wellness explain how these challenge current conceptualizations of mental health and existing mental health policies.

A global explorer and traveler, Dean Jacobs has traversed across the globe exploring over 50 countries on a low budget adventure, propelled by a desire to understand the world we share.

His book, Wondrous Creatures - Explore a World of Animals from A to Z, is a favorite for children. His book, Wondrous Journey, described his adventures to better understand the world and portrays his 22 ½ month journey with 190 pages of stories and 140 of his magnificent photographs. More information at deanjacobs.org

He is Malaika’s most popular speaker and has inspired educators and students throughout Nebraska. Dean states, “I want to inform, educate and inspire kids — to teach them to be engaged in the world instead of afraid of it”.

Born on a farm, Dean is from Fremont, Nebraska. He was graduated from Wayne State College earning a degree in Biology, with minors in Earth Science and Art. After graduating he worked in the administration of Wayne State College as the Assistant to the President before moving on to Purina Mills. And he also worked with Pfizer Pharmaceuticals for 10 years in marketing and sales. He left the corporate world to pursue his dream of a global traveling adventure.

Heather Nebesniak has been a proud Nebraska public school educator for over 30 years. A Grand Island native, she obtained her Bachelors degree in Education from the University of Nebraska Kearney. After graduation, she held various positions in the Omaha-area school districts of Valley, Blair, and Ralston, serving as an elementary teacher, a soccer coach, a district reading coordinator, an elementary principal, and a district early childhood coordinator. While in Omaha, she received her Doctoral degree in Educational Administration from the University of Nebraska Omaha, along with Masters degrees in both Elementary Education and in Educational Administration. She and her family moved to Ord, Nebraska in 2018, when she accepted the position of the Superintendent of Ord Public Schools.

Her recent leadership roles include serving as the current president elect for the Nebraska School Administrator Association and as the past-president of the Nebraska Rural Community Schools Association, where she also sits on the Executive and Legislative Committees. She is a member of the Nebraska Department of Education Commissioner's Superintendent Advisory Council, and also serves on the NDE Literacy Panel. Dr. Nebesniak was recently selected as the NASA Region IV Superintendent of the Year. Her family includes her husband, Erin, their two children, Marlee and Deegan, and their two beloved cocker spaniels, Boomer and Emma.

Raised on a farm in south central Nebraska, Karen graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University with a B.A. in Education and began her career in teaching. She later relocated to Colorado where she worked in Recreation Management. After living in Colorado nineteen years, she returned to Nebraska to care for her disabled Mother until her passing.

She has spent her retirement years as a Community Volunteer serving on the village, zoning, school and cemetery boards in her hometown; county health, historical society, hospital, hospital foundation and crime stoppers boards, Malaika Board and has served on numerous committees in her church and community.

Presently she chairs a committee to restore the 104-year-old bandstand in her hometown of Polk, Nebraska and has been instrumental in raising $62,000 for this project.

Dr. Mary S. Willis has been a professor in higher education for 26 years and is currently an adjunct professor at Johnson County Community College (JCCC) in Overland Park, Kansas. She earned an MA and PhD in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, in 1991 and 1995 respectively. A Science and Diplomacy Fellow with AAAS from 1995–1997, Dr. Willis worked within USAID’s Office of Population, Health, and Nutrition providing technical assistance to programs worldwide. She has traveled and worked in Asia, Africa and South America for 50 years.

Dr. Willis was a member of the University of Nebraska Lincoln faculty from 2000-2022 and at Missouri State from 2022-2025. Her teaching and research are focused on bio-cultural approaches to food and nutrition, as well as global food security. She has studied transitions of refugee populations from South Sudan to the US across two decades and led an education abroad program to Ethiopia and Zambia, training students in food security, health, and nutrition, from 2014-2024. She has recently begun working on an NGO, Healthy African Smiles, to provide dental hygiene education and ensure high dental health status in K-12 students in Zambia and East and Central African countries.

Dr. Willis employs a holistic approach to health and food and nutrition security research and teaching; hence, she studies whole body health and incorporates both biological and cultural, but also archaeological and linguistic, perspectives into her academic approach. She is a Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Applied Anthropology.

Bev’s career began with classroom teaching and evolved to focus on corporate communications and management. She retired in 2002 as Global Director of Marketing Services for Pfizer Animal Health, based in Pfizer World Headquarters in New York. Following a post-retirement return to Nebraska, she became the first executive director of the Malaika Foundation. In this role she made introductory contacts with organizations and individuals and worked with them to create Malaika’s first international symposium for Nebraska educators.

A 1988 trip to Kenya Initiated Bev’s attachment to southern Africa, which a decade later resulted in a one-year civic leave of absence from Pfizer to serve as a WorldTeach volunteer in Namibia. She subsequently returned to Namibia numerous times to continue working with disadvantaged students and teachers there.

Bev has a B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Nebraska and a Certificate of Professional Achievement in Teaching of English as a Second Language from Columbia University. She has served on boards of the International Association of Business Communicators, Lincoln Literacy, Rotary Club 14, Friends of Lied, and Friends of the University of Nebraska State Museum.

Dr. Randy Bertolas is professor of geography and chair of the Department of History, Politics, and Geography at Wayne State College in the rolling hills of northeast Nebraska. For over thirty years he has instructed students preparing for careers in social studies education. From 2004-18 he served as coordinator of the Geographic Educators of Nebraska and authored the Student Atlas of Nebraska.

Dr. Bertolas is a three-time recipient of the WSC Student Senate’s Professor of the Year Award (2005, 2009, 2024) and was recognized with the Nebraska State College System’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2018. Bertolas' research interests include geography education, natural disasters, and tourism. His teaching interests include world regional, political, and human geography as well as regional study of Russia, Nebraska, the United States and Canada.

Joe Starita was an investigative reporter in New York and Miami for 15 years before joining the UNL College of Journalism, where he taught depth reporting for 20 years. A two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, the Lincoln native has won more than 25 national and regional awards for his reporting.

Starita also is the author of three acclaimed books on Native Americans: The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge – a Lakota Odyssey; I Am a Man – Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice and A Warrior of the People: How Susan La Flesche Overcame Racial and Gender Inequality to Become America’s First Indian Doctor. Starita’s biography of Chief Standing Bear is being made into a full-length feature film.

Audrey Woita is from a 5th generation farm family from Geneva, Nebraska, whose roots in the land have shaped everything she does. After earning her Early Childhood Education degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she headed west to Los Angeles, where she taught in both private and public schools. After relocating to Colorado to teach, she pursued a graduate degree in Instructional Design. That launched a 15+ year career in learning and development, starting at Oracle— she designed and delivered training programs across large, complex organizations, and supported nonprofits focused on making good, whole food accessible to all communities.

For fun, Audrey developed the “Centene Farm” a prototype of a managed health care farm for hospital/patients in St Louis. Scripts for vegetable growing/consuming, not medicine. Audrey brings a deep commitment to sustainable community development.

Back in Nebraska, she now serves as Director of the Hillside Fund, leading local and statewide efforts to advance regenerative farming and a circular food economy in the region — a role that feels like a full-circle return to where it all began.