Board Members

Clara Rulegura Ford
FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CEO

Clara Ford was born and raised in Tanzania to politician father and a mother who was public school teacher, hence Public service and the importance of giving back was instilled in her from a very young age. She migrated to the USA in the year 2000, and now lives in Dallas, TX with her husband and 3 children.

Clara graduated with a BBA in Accounting from University of Houston-Downtown in 2010 and she currently holds 2 MA degrees for Applied Economics as well as Sustainability & Development from Southern Methodist University.

Her professional experience is within the financial service industry, where she worked as a Commercial lending officer, first for JP Morgan Chase Bank, and later in 2017 for Bank of America. She currently works for the Federal Reserve System as a senior bank examiner.

In 2019, Clara who is a Native Swahili speaker, together with her former economics professor from SMU, founded Kijiji Innovative Sustainable Solutions (KISS); a nonprofit organization as a tool for finding practical, but sustainable solutions for alleviating extreme poverty in rural Tanzania, starting with her late father’s birth Village of Kasisa. Her project is part of the 2020 cohort with the Clinton Global Initiatives University (CGI-U).

As a way to give back to the country of her birth, she hopes to provide a venue for everyone willing in anyway, to make a difference in the lives of these Villagers. She believes in the notion that, “It takes a Village” and only through cooperation and interdependence will we be able to reduce extreme poverty in all forms.

Thomas Osang
TREASURER, CFO

Thomas Osang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, San Diego. His research and teaching interests are in the area of economic development as well as international trade and finance. He has taught economic development courses for undergraduates, M.A. and Ph.D. students at SMU.

He is the author of two books, several book chapters and numerous articles in
publications such as the Journal of Development Economics, the Southern Economic Journal, the Canadian Journal of Economics and the American Economic Review.

Paul Westbrook
SECRETARY

Paul Westbrook designed his own solar home in north Texas in 1996, which won the Energy Value Housing Award for Innovative Design (https://enerjazz.com/house). He led the green design of a Texas Instruments factory in Richardson, which was the first LEED Gold semiconductor factory in the world. Paul then worked to improve the energy and water efficiency of TI’s 20 million square feet of global facilities. They were able to double the company energy and water efficiency in less than 10 years.

In 2012, Paul was named a Senior Fellow for the US State Department’s Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA) program. He visited Honduras, Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru where he worked with governments, universities, and industry on efficiency and renewable energy. In 2019 Paul published a book - The Joy of Efficiency. Paul’s degree is in Mechanical Engineering.

Martin Rulegura
ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER

Martin Rulegura, born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, but my parents originally come from Mwanza where the Kijiji initiative is based. I graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam as an Environmental Engineer in 2004. Worked for a couple of years with various organizations dealing with environmental components especially within the water distribution aspects as well as the responsible mining practices.

From 2006 to date, I embarked on a Missionary Volunteer program within the Catholic Church in Tanzania, working to ameliorate the lives of marginalized families and youth in different parts of Tanzania but most of all in two regions: Mwanza and Bukoba. My core desire is to see people develop in all respects for the betterment of their welfare, hence raising their standard of living holistically.

Jessie Marshall Zarazaga
PROGRAM DIRECTOR, LYLE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING, SMU

Working across the boundaries of urbanism, landscape mapping, and public engagement, Zarazaga explores ways to connect culture and community to place. Using GIS and participatory community mapping, she explores the impact of civil and environmental choices on the design of the sustainable city.

As program director of the Masters in Sustainability and Development in the Lyle school of Engineering at SMU, Zarazaga supports community based projects both locally and internationally, ensuring that every student makes a measurable impact on the environment, working with real stakeholders in
specific contexts integrating design, geospatial mapping and participatory principles, she connects engineering to the human context.

Jessie Zarazaga’s academic research spans education and practice, working on the integration of community research into project based learning. Her work overlaps areas of GIS mapping, global sustainable urbanism, design and creativity. She undertook a Fulbright in Valparaíso, Chile, to investigate, and map, devices of landscape as inspirations for the orders of community space and, African raised, she continues to work on sustainable projects in Kenya, Botswana and Tanzania.

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