Concern Blogs

	Tom Arnold was appointed CEO of Concern Worldwide in October 2001. Tom has extensive experience in governmental and non-governmental organizations both in Ireland where he is based, and internationally. For 13 years he worked with the Irish Department of Agriculture and Food, as Chief Economist and as Assistant Secretary General. You can follow Tom on Twitter @TomArnoldCEO
	Paul O’Brien is Overseas Director for Concern Worldwide, overseeing the work of field staff in 25 countries of operation. A former Concern Country Director in Tanzania and Bangladesh, O’Brien also served as Regional Director for Central Africa. He is now based in Dublin. You can follow Paul on Twitter @PaulOB_Concern
	Ed Kenney is Concern Worldwide’s videographer, responsible for both filming and editing. He has travelled throughout Africa, shooting mini-documentaries for Concern. Recent footage he shot in Pakistan was used to produce features that were broadcast on PBS’ World Focus news program. You can follow Ed on Twitter @eokenney
	Joan Bolger is Concern Worldwide’s Information Officer, based in Dublin. She originally joined Concern Worldwide US in 2009 as Communications Officer. She previously worked in Tourism Ireland in New York, and has spent most of her career as a web editor and copy editor for various news outlets including, The Irish Times, The Irish Examiner, and the German Press Agency, DPA. You can follow Joan on Twitter @ngowkr
	Jenny Hobbs joined Concern in Liberia as Education Program Coordinator in 2009. She previously worked as a primary school teacher in Ireland before training teachers in The Gambia and Ethiopia. Jenny is based in Buchannan City, close to Concern’s rural school communities.
	Joop Koopman served as Concern Worldwide US’ press officer. He previously worked at a public relations agency, but spent the bulk of his career as a journalist, working as both a reporter and editor, in addition to a stint as publisher. You can follow Joop on Twitter @joopConcern
	Dominic MacSorley is a 25-year veteran of international aid and development work, and has worked worldwide since joining Concern back in 1982. In recent years, Dominic has led emergency operations in response to a number of crises, many of them in highly politicized and dangerous settings, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur (Sudan), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You can follow Dominic on Twitter @aidwkr
	Susan Finucane is a Program Officer for Concern in New York, and was until only a few months ago, Documentation Officer for Concern in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where she lived and worked for over two years. Susan was deployed to Haiti to help our team on the ground respond to the humanitarian crisis in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. She has since returned to New York. You can follow Susan on Twitter @suefinu
	Feargal O’ Connell has been working for Concern since 2003. His first post took him to Cambodia where he spent four years before transferring to New York. Feargal is the new Program Officer for Concern’s emergency response program in Democratic Republic of the Congo. He will be part of a team that’s providing essential services to over 10,000 displaced families. You can follow Feargal on Twitter @FeargalOC
	Philip Wegner was Concern Worldwide’s Global Child Survival & Health Advisor. Philip has worked in health and development for more than 15 years and manages Concern’s Child Survival programs in Haiti, Burundi, Rwanda and Niger. He is now based in Wisconsin.
	Erin Sorce was Foundations and Programs Officer for Concern Worldwide US for five years, acting as liaison between field staff and the US-based private foundations that support Concern’s work. Erin is now based in Colorado where she continues to work with Concern in a consulting capacity.
	Megan Christensen is based in New York but makes regular site visits to Concern’s child survival programs in Bangladesh, Burundi, Haiti, Niger and Rwanda. As a Health Programs Officer, Megan provides support to the field teams and overseas grant management aspects of the programs.
	Isla Gilmore worked as a foundations fundraiser for Concern Worldwide UK, London, before she took up the post of Program Support Officer in Tanzania in June 2009, and was appointed to the position of Communications and Advocacy Officer in 2010. Isla makes regular field trips to the villages where Concern Tanzania is implementing agricultural and water sector programs. You can follow Isla on Twitter @islagilmore
	Joseph Scott was Concern’s Communications Officer in Malawi. A journalist by profession, Joseph is a keen writer, photographer and videographer and contributed regular updates about Concern’s health, livelihoods, emergency and education programs in Malawi.
	Ange Flora Kamugisha has been part of the Concern Worldwide team in Rwanda since November 2004. She is currently working as the Education Program Liaison Officer in the southern province of Rwanda. She is responsible for three Districts where she works in collaboration with local government to establish, strengthen and support parent teacher committees in schools.
	Getinet Leweyehu worked for Concern from 2007-2011 where he managed the education program for Concern Ethiopia. In his role as Education Advisor, Getinet enabled rural children to acquire basic education skills and worked to provide a bright future full of hope to vulnerable out-of-school girls in urban areas.
	Stewart Gee is a Program Monitoring and Evaluation Manager in Cambodia. Previously, Stewart worked in Ireland as a greenhouse salesman and on a mine, before transitioning into his Cambodian post after stints spent in the field with Concern in both Afghanistan and Haiti. Stewart has been in Cambodia for eight months and is heavily involved in improving Concern’s monitoring and evaluation system.
	Nina Gehm joined Concern in 2006, and moved to South Sudan as Program Support Officer two years later. Based in the capital Juba, Nina travels regularly to visit and meet with the participants of Concern’s education, health, nutrition, water, sanitation and livelihoods projects. When Nina is not in the field hiking up mountains to visit watershed sites, or visiting clinics to assess the impact of Concern’s work, she is attached to her laptop working on donor relations and communications.
	Cormac Staunton is Concern’s Information Officer, working for the Communications and Fundraising teams worldwide, and based in Dublin. He has recently completed a Masters Degree in Economics looking at the impact of Concern’s pilot Cash Transfer program in Zimbabwe. You can follow Cormac on Twitter @CormacStaunton
	Amayele Dia joined Concern in 2009 and is working in Niger as a Program Support Officer. Based in Tahoua, a small town situated 800 km from Niamey, the capital, she regularly goes to the field to visit and meet with the participants of Concern’s education, health, nutrition, and livelihoods projects. When she isn’t interviewing beneficiaries, she is working on donors and partner reports, as well as producing communication pieces about Concern’s work in Niger.
	Aoife Gleeson joined Concern as Finance Director in the New York office in 2007. She has played a critical role in the management of Concern Worldwide US, and overseen finances for humanitarian field operations in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Angola and Haiti, among others. Aoife continues to outperform in her capacity as Finance Director for Concern Worldwide, and is now based in Dublin.
	Cecial Adhikari is the Water and Sanitation Program Manager for Concern in Nepal. Since 2008, through Concern, Cecial has been contributing to improving people’s lives in very remote villages in Nepal by helping them develop water and sanitation facilities and by employing interventions to improve their hygiene behavior. Cecial joined the development sector in 1997 after he graduated in Water and Sanitation Engineering.
	Amanda McClelland is part of Concern’s Emergency Response Team (ERT). On 24 hr deployment notice the ERT supports existing Concern programs to scale up for emergencies or to establish new programs in response to sudden onset disasters. Amanda specializes in public health and emergency programming, working with our health, nutrition and watsan programs as well as expanding the use of cash in emergencies.
	Patrick Allieu is the education coordinator for Concern in Sierra Leone. Before joining Concern in March 2008, Patrick worked with the International Rescue Committee for seven years in Sierra Leone. Presently he is working to strengthen educational services and increase quality and access to primary education in five chiefdoms in the Tonkolili District, Northern province of Sierra Leone.
	Victor Odero is a Human Rights and Advocacy program manager with Concern worldwide, Kenya. His work involves managing programs that empower communities to realise economic and social rights. His experience extends to humanitarian emergencies, where he participated in establishing one of the first ever mobile phone-based cash transfer responses. Recently he was deployed in response to the earthquake in Haiti where he set-up and managed a cash transfer programme.
	Mubashir Ahmed is Assistant Country Director for Concern Worldwide’s programs in Pakistan, and he also coordinates Concern’s response to emergencies. Mubashir is based in Islamabad, but regularly monitors programs in the provinces of Khyber Pakthunkhwa, Punjab, and Balochistan.
	Guest Blogger Flynn Coleman A longtime advocate for human, animal and environmental rights, Flynn Coleman is a lawyer currently serving a judicial clerkship in New York City. She previously served at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, among other prestigious assignments. This blog is based on her essay that earned second-place honors in the Creative Writing Competition 2010, sponsored by Concern.
	Lucia Ennis is Regional Director for Asia for Concern Worldwide, the international humanitarian agency, overseeing its operations in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Cambodia, Laos, and East Timor. Formerly in charge of Concern’s Central Africa Region, she has been with the organization since 2004, following postings in Vietnam, Mongolia and West Africa.
	Ros O’Sullivan has been working on the front lines of the world’s toughest humanitarian emergencies for 20 years. He has led and coordinated Concern’s emergency programs in Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Darfur, Democratic Republic of Congo, to name a few, and works within Concern’s Emergency Unit, conducting assessments of rapid onset emergencies and reporting on emerging crises in various fields.
	Peter McNichol is Country Director for Concern in Democratic Republic of Congo. Peter has been working in humanitarian emergencies with Concern for over 14 years, in places such as Angola, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique.
	Anne O’Mahony is Country Director for Concern Worldwide in Kenya. Anne began working with Concern in the 1980s on the Thai-Cambodia border, setting up health centers for those caught in the conflict and suffering from violence of the Pol Pot regime. Over the years, Anne has worked in some of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies, including famines in Ethiopia and Somalia, and crises in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Liberia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda. She has also served as Regional Director for Concern, overseeing the Horn of Africa.
	Allyson Brown is Active Global Citizens Manager for Concern Worldwide US, an international humanitarian organization. Throughout her professional life, Ms. Brown, a respected public health and social work professional, has worked with vulnerable, marginalized populations to address the root causes of poverty and promote dignity, development and social justice. You can follow Allyson on Twitter @GlobeAlly
	Jennifer Jalovec is Emergency Coordinator for Concern Worldwide in Haiti, where she oversees the organization’s post-earthquake recovery and rebuilding work. A former public relations executive in New York, Jalovec joined the Peace Corps in 2005 and has previously worked in Uganda and East Timor.
	Kevin Fortuna is a media and start-up veteran with deal-making and C-level management experience at both Fortune 500 and smaller companies. He was most recently President and CEO of Quigo, an advertising technology company which was acquired by Time Warner’s AOL division in 2007.
	Francesca Reinhardt joined Concern in Chad in 2010 as Program Support Officer. She has previously worked with UNFPA Malawi and UNHCR Brussels, and is interested in food security and rural development. Francesca is based in Goz Beida, eastern Chad, 70 kilometers from the border with Sudan.
	Jennifer Weiss is health advisor for Concern Worldwide US, currently managing Concern’s Child Survival programs in Rwanda, Burundi, and Niger. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, she holds a Masters in Public Health from Tulane University.
	Kirk Prichard After receiving his Master’s degree in International Humanitarian Assistance from the University of Groningen, Kirk, a native of New Jersey, began working with Concern in Afghanistan, and is now based out of the US office undertaking advocacy and program support.
	Sylvia Wong is the Education Officer for Concern US and is based in New York. Sylvia runs the Global Concerns Classroom (GCC) program working with US students and teachers bringing global issues into schools. You can follow Sylvia’s tweets on GCC activity @ConcernGCC
	Joseph Cahalan is president of the Xerox Foundation and vice president of communications and social responsibility at Xerox Corporation.Cahalan joined Xerox in 1971 and held a series of positions in public affairs and communications with the company. He was a member of the corporate-wide team that put the Xerox quality process in place, which resulted in Xerox receiving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1989.Before joining Xerox, Cahalan held a variety of internal, community, and public relations positions for The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He served in the United States Army as an instructor at the Department of Defense Information School and, later, as deputy chief of public information at U.S. Army Headquarters in Vietnam. He was also an adjunct professor at Fairfield University’s Graduate School of Communications from 1972 to 1991 and served on the board of the Connecticut Arts Commission from 1976 to 1981. Cahalan currently also serves on the board of trustees of the Arthur Page Society, the board of advisors of the Democratic Leadership Council, the board of directors of the Stamford Center for the Arts, and the Advisory Council of the Business Committee for the United Nations.
	Emily Bradley joined Concern in August 2011 and serves as the Program Support Officer at Concern’s office in Pakistan. Prior to Pakistan, Emily worked on-the-ground in Rwanda and Ethiopia and as a child protection social worker in Dublin. She also has masters in international development and management from Lund University in Sweden.
	Nicki Sugrue joined Concern in 2010 as Program Support Officer in Burundi. She is based in the capital, Bujumbura, and travels regularly to Kirundo and Cibitoke, where Concern is implementing programs. Before coming to Concern, Nicki worked in child protection with UNICEF in Mozambique.