Our Board of Directors and Advisors

Our board members are unpaid volunteers. Our directors are responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Foundation, research, strategic planning, policy formation, fundraising and conducting field assignments. They attend quarterly board meetings. We are currently seeking additional directors who believe in our mission. Please contact us if you are dedicated to supporting indigenous peoples' education, spreading indigenous knowledge and science, and feel you could contribute to the Foundation in this capacity.

Our advisors act in an informal capacity. They promote and advise the Foundation and may also contribute material to our website.

Ray Waddington, President. Dr. Waddington combined his passion for travel, photography and writing with his training in the social sciences and his philanthropic interests to establish The Peoples of the World Foundation.

"I believe that we in the 'developed' world have an obligation to indigenous peoples. That they will continue to be assimilated into their surrounding cultures in the name of globalization is undoubted. However, their overwhelming desire is to be an active part of this process on their own terms: to achieve self-determination and political representation. In my own observations, lack of access to education is the largest, single hindrance to realizing that desire. I want The Peoples of the World Foundation to help bridge two education gaps — non-indigenous peoples' unfamiliarity with indigenous peoples and indigenous peoples' lack of education about the world that is engulfing them."

Jason Ricciardi. Mr. Ricciardi holds a B.A. in Criminal Justice, with a minor in Psychology, from Stonehill College, Boston, MA. He also holds an M.A. in Government and Politics with a major in International Relations and a minor in Public Personnel Administration from St. John's University after studying at their Rome, Italy campus. At the same time he received a Certificate in International Law and Diplomacy.

He is multi-lingual in English, Italian, Spanish, Korean and Quechua. He has over eight years of international experience living, working, studying and traveling throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. Today it is African humanitarian affairs and an abundance of native and international languages that inspire him and he is eager to offer real and meaningful assistance to those who need it the most. His first experience as a development worker took place from 2004 to 2007 in the Ecuadorian Amazon as a Health Program Volunteer with the Peace Corps. It was during this assignment that he truly began to understand the complexities of poverty, particularly the difficulty in finding adequate, sustainable solutions. In combination now with educational theory, he is ready to take the next step in his passion and contribute to the struggle for social justice.

Joanna Dean. Miss Dean has been involved in fundraising for, and teaching English to, indigenous peoples for the past 4 years. In this capacity she has successfully raised over $2600 for organizations including St. Matthew's Orphanage Center in Myanmar. She has taught English in Myanmar and Cambodia.

She is currently studying International Development at Leeds University in the United Kingdom, where she is specializing in Education and East Asian Studies in preparation for a career working with NGOs. She also has a passion for photography — particularly in relation to social and cultural anthropology. Her photographic work has included the H'mong, Akha, Kachin and Quichua indigenous groups.

John Nagella. Mr. Nagella is the Founder and Chairperson of the Centre for Adivasee Studies and Peace (CASP), a not-for-profit NGO that works with the Chenchu people of the Krishna River Valley in Andhra Pradesh, India. Himself a Malla/Chenchu, he has worked with the Chenchus since 1995 in the areas of Culture, History, Poverty Reduction and Social Development.

Mr. Nagella speaks English, Hindi and Telugu. He was a trained community health care professional working for the Government of Andhra Pradesh, India from 1970 to 1994. He is a student of Law at the Andhra Christian College of Law. He also studied Fundraising on the Internet.

He is currently a student of Export, Development and Diversification, an e-course offered by the World Bank Institute.

Thomas Weber Carlsen. Mr. Weber Carlsen holds a Bachelor's degree in Art History and a Masters degree in Architecture and Industrial Design. His association with the peoples of Cambodia goes back to 1994, when he used his training in industrial design and architecture working with various humanitarian mine clearance agencies on the design and development of mine clearance equipment. Recently he has lived jointly in Cambodia and his native Denmark, working primarily as a videoethnographer. His work includes the film Anger of the Spirits featuring the Tampuan people in their plight between Animism and globalization. He is also a major collaborator on the project, Voices of Khmer Rouge, a 43-hour video installation with personal stories of 30 former Khmer Rouge members. The project was undertaken in collaboration with the Danish video artist, Jan Krogsgaard and the Phnom Penh based, US-founded media workshop, Fit Media. It is currently being promoted in Cambodia, Denmark, and elsewhere to coincide with the United Nations sponsored trial, in Phnom Penh, of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity.

He was also involved in establishing a video documentation center for the indigenous peoples of Ratanakiri province, Cambodia, with local and international NGOs such as DRIVE (Developing Remote Indigenous Village Education), NTFP (the Non-Timber Forest Products Project), and CARE Cambodia. An example of Mr. Weber Carlsen's work can be found under our program, publish your work.

Sathya Mohan P. V. Mr. Mohan is an ethnographic documentary film maker. He holds a Diploma in Photography, a B.A. in History and Archaeology and an M.A. in Social Anthropology. He is a producer, director and cameraman for the Countrywide Educational Television Network in India. In 1988 he won the National Award of the first University Grants Commission, India, Educational TV Festival for best production of an ethnographic film, for his film on the Koyas, a peasant tribe in Andhra Pradesh, India. He has received numerous other awards, spoken at conferences and published a variety of work in ethnography and visual anthropology.

His latest films are Discourse with the Dead (2007), about Sora Shamanism and Transcending the Dead (2007), about the Guar ceremony of the Soras. Examples of his work can be found under our program, publish your work.