A list of individuals involved in the leadership of Somali Family Services.

Somali Family Services Board of Directors 

Molly McCoy, Chair
Molly McCoy works with teachers and schools to promote their understanding of international issues through workshops, conferences and events. She currently works as the Outreach Coordinator in the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota where she develops programs that bring the talents and resources of university faculty to K-12 teachers and administrators.  She holds an M.A. in Comparative and International Development Education from the University of Minnesota.  As a returned Peace Corps Volunteer in South Africa, she has a personal commitment to raising awareness about Africa and more specifically, new immigrant communities from Somalia living in Minnesota.  She has been involved with Somali Family Services as a volunteer and board member since 2004.

Ali Warsame, Co-chair -Ali Warsame has double Bachelor from Metropolitan State University 1) BS in Global Studies Political Science 2) Bs Accounting & Business Management. Ali has also obtained Series-7 License in 2000. A Series covers topics
including; Equity Securities, Debt Securities, Options and Derivatives, Securities Markets and Regulations, Retirement Plans, Investment Companies, and Taxation. Ali Warsame has been in the Profit/Non-profit sector more than (15) fifteen years and has been with various non-profit organizations some of them as a paid program Director others as a volunteer/fellowship, and currently serving various nonprofit & profit organization as a Board member. Currently, Ali is a Director of East African Economic Development.

Lena Jones, Secretary
Faculty, Department of Political Science Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Lena Jones (M.A., Political Science; Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Political Science, University of Minnesota) is a full-time faculty member at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, where she has been teaching since 2002.  At MCTC, Lena teaches courses on American Politics, State and Local Government, World Politics, and the Civil Rights Movement.  She also teaches a course on civic engagement and critical pedagogy for MCTC’s Urban Teacher Program.  Lena is active in several civic engagement initiatives in the Twin Cities and is part of a core team that received a 2006 Minnesota Campus Compact/Minnesota Office of Higher Education grant to create a Center for Civic Engagement at MCTC. In 2006, Lena was part of a delegation that went to Somalia to begin building this relationship between the institutions.  In 2004, Lena received a fellowship from the University of Minnesota’s Human Rights Center to support a residency with the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) where she participated in IDASA’s efforts to institute civic engagement projects in the Gauteng province.

Carol Kratzer, Treasurer
Carol Kratzer, Operations Manager, Ameriprise Financial. Carol has been employed at Ameriprise Financial (formerly American Express Financial Advisors) for 11 years, servicing Mutual Fund accounts and Call Center Operations Management.  She holds a B.S. in Economics from Metropolitan State University.  She has also served as a member of the fundraising and planning committee for Morris Park Players Community Theater group. She has been volunteering for Somali Family Services for the last four years and she has raised funds for Puntland State University Scholarship Fund. 

Thomas O’Connell, Professor of Political Science, Metropolitain State University.
Professor Thomas is Professor of Political Studies, received his PhD from the Union Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio. Professor O’Connell teaches courses in Political Science and Sociology and coordinates the Social Science Internship Program. O’Connell has had extensive experience with alternative education and community-based organizations and helped develop the proposal that lead to establishment of the Urban Teacher Program at Metropolitan State University. He currently serves a co-coordinator of the UTP Social Studies Licensure Program.

Jamal Elmi, Advantage Program Assistant, CommonBand Communities
 
Michal Moskow (M.A. in Multicultural Education, Univ of Akron; Ph.D. in American Studies / cultural & linguistic anthropology, Case Western Reserve Univ.) is Director of Online Learning and faculty in Literature and Language, Metropolitan State University (on leave, University West, Sweden); adjunct professor, Second Language Teaching and Learning, Grad School of Education, Hamline University.  She was educated and has taught in the U.S., Europe and Puerto Rico.  Her involvement with human rights and conflict negotiation includes domestic violence, foster care, and immigrant advocacy.  Her teaching includes sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, intercultural communication, ethnicity, gender studies and genocide and human rights courses both in the classroom and online.  She has connected classes in the U.S. and Europe via online discussions.  She participated in a workshop on Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution in Africa, University for Peace Africa Programme, U.N, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 2007. 

Maslah Jama- Financial analyst, Best Buy. Maslah Jama, Finance, Best Buy Co,. Incl.
Maslah has been employed at BBY for 3 1/2 years finance supplier business relations
team. Before BBY Maslah has worked for Merrill Corp. as purchasing coordinator,
Target corporation receipt and control specialist and Automatic data processing
APD global services, he currently serves as board member for East
African development and economics center. He has been volunteering for
Somali Family Services and served as board member since 2005.

Somali Family Services Advisory Board
Patrick Plonski, Executive Director of Books For Africa
Travis Burke, USAID
Adam Diehl, World Bank
Eric Robinson, Program Officer, East and Southern Africa of National Endowment for Democracy.
Mohamud Said (Guumbe), Programme Coordinator Diakonia
Khalif Farah, Programme Officer, Governance Portfolio UNDP Somalia
Rang Hee kim, Transportation Manager Counterpart International.
Phillip Cooper, Deputy Governnance Manager-UNDP-Somalia
Mohamud Hamud, Executive Director Puntland State University
Zamzam Billow, Emergency Monitoring and Capacity Building Officer-Oxfam Novib