Our Vision

A world of "information affluence" for all, regardless of location, education, or wealth.

Our Mission

First Voice International (FVI) seeks to ensure that people living in poverty and remote places get the information they need to improve their lives, have the means to communicate their needs and wants, are able to share what they know with others - in their own voice. We strive to reach the most people for the least cost by combining satellite and other technologies. We bypass the isolating effects of illiteracy and remoteness, and we routinely deliver information to people in areas lacking electricity, telephone or Internet service.

First Voice International Board

Noah Samara, Interim Chair, bio
Peter Edwards, Secretary, bio
Joseph Patrick Roche, Treasurer, bio
Elsie Walker, bio
Kirk Talbott, bio
Cinnamon Dornsife, bio
Mary Dwyer Pembroke, bio
David B. Sandalow, bio
Jon Kertzer, bio

First Voice International Board Emeritus

Rebecca Adamson, bio
Shirish Pareek, bio
Andy Raswork, bio

First Voice International Senior Advisors

Deborah McGlauflin, Senior Development Advisor
Margaret Bartel, Senior Accounting Advisor
Mohammed Boulahya, Senior Policy Advisor
Peter Odhengo, Senior Advisor
Kelly Sponberg, Multimedia Service Advisor
Sohini Baliga, Senior Communications Advisor

First Voice International Senior Staff

Kirk Talbott, President and CEO
Jason Forauer, Program Manager, bio
Humphrey Mwaura, Africa Representative, bio

Bios

Noah Samara, Interim Chair, Founder, Chairman and CEO, WorldSpace
Noah Samara is an Ethiopian-born lawyer better known for being the founder and Chief Executive Officer of WorldSpace Corporation™, the world's first to launch satellite radio. He also played a pivotal role in the foundation of XM Satellite Radio. He has said that the driving motive for the foundation of WorldSpace™ is to give millions of people in Asia and Africa access to information, so as to facilitate the curbing of the spread of disease in those regions, particularly AIDS. Samara holds a MS Degree in Foreign Service and a JD from The George Town University School of Law.

Peter Edwards, Secretary, Founder and President, Acorn Media Inc.
Peter Edwards, founder and chairman of Acorn Media Group, has a broad background in communications. Before founding Acorn, his work in emerging communications technologies included consulting for cable companies such as Cablevision and Viacom during the major-city cable television franchising competitions of the 1980s. He also served as a consultant to the City of Reading, Pennsylvania, home of the world's oldest two-way cable system. Also active in video production, he worked for the Washington bureau of NBC News and independently on a range of documentaries and music videos. Edwards has a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications, where he focused on new communications technologies and markets.

Joseph Patrick Roche, Treasurer, Co-founder, CEO Roche & Associates
Joseph P. Roche, CPA, has over 20 years of public accounting experience. Before founding Roche and Associates in 1991, he spent seven years at the international accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche as an audit manager specializing in not-for-profit organizations and government contractors. Roche & Associates have become specialists in the field of outsourced controller and accounting services in the not-for-profit sector, currently serving more than fifty such organizations. Mr. Roche serves as Treasurer for the St. Raphael's Parish CYO in Rockville and Co-Chair of the Parent Teacher Association of Georgetown Preparatory School in Bethesda. He is also a member of several notable organizations such as the Board of Directors of Jesuit Volunteers International. Mr. Roche has a bachelor's degree in accounting from The Catholic University of America.

Elsie Walker, President, The Mountain Institute (TMI)
Elsie Walker is the President of the Mountain Institute and the founder of TMI's Peak Enterprise Program, an initiative to foster environmentally friendly private enterprise development in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. She has worked for 25 years on projects and programs benefiting mountain people, particularly in India and China, and is interested in the design of programs that integrate economic development with cultural and environmental conservation. She has a background in NGO and program development and management; fundraising; project design and implementation; private sector collaboration; small enterprise development strategies and citizen exchanges. In 2002, she arranged the first exchange between the U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme People's Court of China, led by Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She received a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in 1969.

Kirk Talbott, President and CEO, First Voice International
Kirk Talbott joined First Voice International as President/CEO in June, 2003. He comes to the job after twenty years of experience in international development with a concentration in law, community empowerment, natural resources management, and security and human rights issues in Asia and Africa. He spent nearly ten years at the World Resources Institute managing programs in Africa and then served as the first regional director for Asia. He has also worked on resource management and community development in mainland Asia at the Nature Conservancy and Conservation International. In addition, he practiced international law in the field of nuclear testing litigation, led the Amnesty International Chapter at Georgetown Law Center and worked for several years at the International Law Institute training government officials in contract negotiations and project procurement. Mr. Talbott has been a guest teacher at Yale, Georgetown, John Hopkins, SAIS and the George Washington universities among others and has published widely. A member of the D.C. Bar, and a graduate of Yale University, Mr. Talbott has a J.D. and M.S.F.S. from Georgetown University Law Center and the Foreign Service School.

Cinnamon Dornsife, Associate Director, International Development Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
Cinnamon Dornsife is an Asia-Pacific expert with a focus on international banking, economic development and foreign policy. She is currently the Associate Director of the International Development Program (IDEV) at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She serves on the Bretton Woods Committee and two boards at the Japan America Institute for Management Sciences. Previously, she has been US Executive Director and Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, and spent thirteen years working in international development at The Asia Foundation, the World Bank, the Pathfinder Fund and the USDA. Ms. Dornsife has a Masters Degree in International Relations from SAIS, and a Bachelors Degree in Chemistry and Mathematics from Emory University.

Mary Dwyer Pembroke, Chief of Staff, Council on Foundations
Ms. Dwyer Pembroke comes to her current position at the Council on Foundations after several years in government relations and development with corporate grant makers and high net worth individuals for Special Olympics International. She lobbied the Senate for Freddie Mac and lobbied the statehouse in Illinois and Capitol Hill for Citicorp, FSB based in Chicago. She also chairs the board of the International Women's Democracy Center and is an independent board member for New York Mortgage Trust, a publicly traded real estate investment trust. Ms. Dwyer Pembroke began on Capitol Hill working for a Democratic congressman from Tennessee, and on the Senate Banking Committee under Jake Garn, a Utah Republican, where she served as the housing and urban affairs subcommittee counsel. Ms. Dwyer Pembroke received a BA in History, French, and Political Science, as well as a JD degree from Marquette University.

David B. Sandalow, Director of the Environment & Energy Project at The Brookings Institution
Mr. Sandalow chairs the Energy & Climate Working Group of the Clinton Global Initiative. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Sandalow has previously served as Assistant Secretary for Oceans, Environment & Science at the U.S. State Department, Senior Director for Environmental Affairs at the National Security Council, Associate Director for the Global Environment at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Executive Vice President at the World Wildlife Fund-US. His opinion pieces and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Boston Globe, Science and many other periodicals. A graduate of Yale University, Mr. Sandalow has a JD from the University of Michigan Law School.

Jon Kertzer, Senior Music Producer, Zune Marketplace at Microsoft
Mr. Kertzer works with record companies, managers and artists to present music to Zune consumers, and establish new international content partners for Zune users. In his work at EMP, a non-profit organization, Mr. Kertzer has been creating exciting new programming and media exhibits as well as supervising all the multimedia content in the galleries, including interactive exhibits, audio tours and public programming. Previously at Microsoft he served as lead of the audio and music team in development, creation and production of such Microsoft CD-ROM programs as Encarta, Atlas, Musical Instruments, Music Central, Cinemania and more. A trained ethnomusicologist, Mr. Kertzer has also taught American Popular Music courses at the University of Washington, where he was also Director of Concerts and Educational Outreach for their School of Music. Mr. Kertzer is a graduate of Brown University and a trained enthomusicologist who did his graduate work at the University of London Center for World Music.

Rebecca Adamson, Founder and President, First Peoples Worldwide
Rebecca Adamson is founder and president of First Nations Development Institute and founder of First Peoples Worldwide. She has worked directly with grassroots tribal communities and as an advocate for tribal issues in the United States since 1970. Her work is credited with establishing a new field of culturally appropriate, values-driven development, including the creation of the first reservation-based micro-enterprise loan fund in the United States, the first tribal investment model, a national movement for reservation land reform, and legislation that established new standards of accountability regarding federal trust responsibility for Native Americans. Ms. Adamson has worked in Australia and Africa, and currently serves on a number of nonprofit and university advisory boards. She has received numerous awards, including the 2003 National Women's History Award, and holds a Masters of Science in Economic Development degree from the University of Southern New Hampshire, where she now teaches a graduate course on indigenous economics within the Community Economic Development Program.

Shirish Pareek, President and CEO, PartsZone
Shirish Pareek, who co-founded PartsZone, is a leading expert on the application of technology to improving the effectiveness of supply chain and sourcing processes. He has worked with more than 25 Fortune 500 clients to help them adopt eSourcing and supply-chain technologies. Previously, Mr. Pareek served as Vice President of Services Operations at B2eMarkets, where he led all post-sales client support and consulting services operations. He has also served as an Engagement Manager at international management-consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he led the ePurchasing and Supplier Management Practice. Before that he worked in India and Indonesia with Halliburton Energy Services. Mr. Pareek earned a B.S. with University Honors in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and an MBA with specialization in Operations and Strategy from Carnegie Mellon University.

Andy Raswork, Entrepreneurial Resource Group LLC Partner
Mr. Raswork, former Chief Operating Officer at WorldSpace™ Corporation came to WorldSpace™ after serving as President and CEO of Semantix Inc., an enterprise software firm. Before that, he worked for ten years at Hewlett Packard where he distinguished himself in a succession of increasingly responsible senior management positions in marketing and management - the proposed, developed and ran the company's business-to-business direct sales operations, the HP Business Store. Mr. Raswork previously worked at ASCOM AG in Switzerland, where his responsibilities included management of telecommunications projects and engineering. Mr. Raswork received his MBA from INSEAD, European Business School of Fontainebleau, France. He earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Jason Forauer, Program Manager
Jason Forauer joined First Voice International in October, 2007. He comes to First Voice with over six years of development experience working on development projects in Africa, including five years of field experience designing and managing projects. Experience working in pastoral livelihoods, Information Communication Technology (ICT), livestock marketing, sustainable agriculture, micro-credit, gender, human rights, health infrastructure, food security and fair trade.

Humphrey Mwaura, Africa Representative
Humphrey assumed the leadership position for First Voice Africa, based in Nairobi Kenya, in December 2007.  He possesses a unique mix of experience, knowledge and skills that he can use to design appropriate communication technologies for remote communities through research, implementation, end user trainings and technical support. Humphrey received his BSC in computer science from Nazerene University in 2002.