John is the co-founder and founding Executive Director of PEN Kenya formerly the Poverty Eradication Network (PEN). He provided strategic oversight to PEN Kenya while ensuring quality control and accountability for results. He worked in partnership with more than 100 CSOs, developing their institutional capacity through participatory assessment, organizational development, training and mentoring. He is a recognized international expert in leadership development, good governance, strategic planning, resource mobilization and all aspects of organizational change and development for Not-for-profit organizations.
Before founding PEN, John worked in senior management posts with international NGOs in S.E. Asia, East Africa, USA and UK. He was International Training Director at the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) based in the Philippines (1978/1985), Regional Training Adviser for CARE International based in Kenya (1986/1989), Country Director and – later – CEO for ActionAid in Kenya and UK respectively (1989/1998) and Director General of the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) in Nairobi, Kenya (1998/2002). Between 1990 and 1995 John was one of a small group of Civil Society leaders who led an advocacy strategy to create a more enabling environment for CSOs in Kenya. As part of this strategy John played a leading role in establishing the NGO Council in Kenya (1993) and served on the first NGO Coordination Board (1993/1995) with whom he contributed to writing the first Rules and Regulations and Code of Conduct for NGOs in Kenya.
John is an established international consultant in the fields of non-profit governance, organizational development, leadership, management, strategic planning, education and resource mobilization.
John has served on a wide range of international and national Not-for-profit Boards in UK, EU, USA, The Philippines and here in East Africa., John was born in UK lived in Kenya from 1985 to 2016. He is an educator by profession; beginning his career as a high school mathematics teacher in UK and later becoming Head of Department and Dean of Students at Priory School in Kingston, Jamaica, where he also founded the Priory Adult College of Education (P.A.C.E.) in 1972. He earned an MA in Education at Western Carolina University (1975) and a PhD in Educational Administration and Supervision at the University of Alabama (1978).
