Advisors’ Community

Amahnui George Amenchwi is an Environmentalist and Entrepreneur from Cameroon. He holds a masters degree in Natural Resources and Environmental management and a PhD in the same discipline at the University of Buea.
He has before served as a Research Assistant on a German sponsored Pilot Project on waste-to-energy at the University of Buea. Thereafter, Amahnui Co-Founded BOOSTGREEN (www.boostgreen.org), an environmental start up in Cameroon aimed at helping communities manage waste and promoting sustainable agriculture. He has also hold other positions like volunteer coordinator for Green Peace Africa and senior program officer for Environment at the African Youth Union Commission (AYUC).
He is currently researching on the role of beneficial management practices in reducing soil greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing soil carbon sequestration in maize production systems in Cameroon. Amahnui is passionate about researching on possible ways of ensuring food security while reducing environmental footprint in Africa.

Sara is currently the Leadership and Capacity Development Specialist with Extension Lakes, a program of the College of Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Her previous position was with the Wisconsin K-12 Energy Education Program (KEEP), a program of the Wisconsin Center for Environmental Education also at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Sara has more than 15 years of experience developing, implementing, and evaluating environmental education programming for the K-12 audience.
She successfully developed and launched an online course for teachers focused on renewable energy, a conceptual framework focused on building science in renewable energy, and a multi-year approach to place-based learning with a school district. Sara has presented at dozens of state and national conferences, taught hundreds of educators across Wisconsin, and has worked internationally with the Ministry of Education in Taiwan to provide energy education workshops for Taiwanese educators.
Another area of Sara’s expertise is the sustainability of schools as she has provided guidance and support to multiple schools as they work to make their schools healthier while increasing environmental education for students. Sara received a B.A. in Environmental Science and Biology from Adrian College, MI and an M.S. in Environmental Studies from the College of Charleston, SC. She is on the Board of Directors for RENEW Wisconsin and received the Educator of the Year award from Slipstream, a nonprofit that inspires new solutions to big energy challenges, in 2017. Sara is able to advise on projects relating to increasing the environmental literacy of teachers and students. Specific areas of focus could include energy efficiency, renewable energy, and general environmental education. Another area of interest includes capacity building and leadership development.

Dr. Nsikak-Abasi Aniefiok Etim obtained Bachelor of Agriculture (First Class Honours) degree in Agricultural Economics and Extension from University of Uyo, Nigeria. He earned Master of Science (M.Sc) degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He also earned Doctorate in Agricultural Economics (Resource and Environmental Economics) from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Nigeria. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, University of Uyo, Nigeria and has 20 years teaching, research, mentoring and judging experience within and outside the university. His areas of research are development, resource and environmental economics with foci on efficiency, climate change and poverty issues in the contexts of production and environment. Dr. Etim is an advisory mentor in the Queen’s Young Leaders Mentoring Program, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom where he assists the Queen’s young leaders aged 18-29 from across the Commonwealth to tackle issues on environment. He was selected by UNESCO to mentor and co-teach girls aged 10-18 years in the very first Technovation Idea Lab Summer 2020 season. Dr. Etim is engaged as a judge in the Global Conrad challenge, Florida, USA. He has volunteered for more than 25 organizations and institutions from across Africa, North America and Europe to motivate, inspire, mold and shape the career path of the next generation of scientists and entrepreneurs. He has published over ninety (90) peer reviewed scientific articles in reputable and leading national and international journals.

Laura Arndt is founder and executive director of Global GreenSTEM. She works with educators and students to create purposeful, relevant GreenSTEM experiences that inspire and empower learners of all cultures and identities to understand and change the world. Laura’s goal is to create opportunities for understanding and empathy between people and their natural environment through active learning and positive action. She customizes educational experiences to local environmental issues, to targeted STEM concepts or skills, and to the learners’ culture, interests, and concerns. Her life-long curiosity about, celebration of, and respect for the environment and for people of all cultures began as a child growing up in the state of Missouri (USA). She lives, works, and raised her children near Denver, Colorado, surrounded by a ponderosa pine forest on the ancestral land of the Ute, Cheyenne and Oceti Sakowin. In formal education, Laura currently works with Guam Department of Education to create systemic instructional change by facilitating island-relevant professional learning experiences for the K-12 STEM program. She also works with Indigenous educators to co-develop a unique Indigenized STEAM curriculum for American Indian Academy of Denver that teaches conventional science, math, and technology through the lens of Indigenous Ways of Knowing. She co-facilitates professional learning with Indigenous colleagues that focus on Indigenized problem- and project-based learning experiences, social and restorative justice, and data-driven decision-making. In informal education, Laura has worked with zoos, museums, state parks, nature centers, government agencies, and national and international environmental/wildlife organizations. She works with organizations that include Captain Planet Foundation, New Mexico STEAMing Ahead, Biomimicry Institute, and India STEM Alliance to develop purposeful standards-based GreenSTEM action projects. She is working with the Ugandan Conservation Through Public Health to help expand their mountain gorilla conservation projects to include and empower the students and youth of the villages next to the forest. She dedicated two decades, starting in the mid 1980s, to developing and implementing gorilla-forest conservation education programs and curricula with several other international mountain gorilla organizations. Laura’s consulting is enriched by fifteen years of teaching high school science and elementary science/ GreenSTEM. She presents at conferences, schools, and organizational meetings nationally and internationally. She has authored the NSTA Press curriculum Using Forensics: Wildlife Crime Scene and has written articles for a variety of professional education publications.

Professor Samuel Aderemi Igbatayo is an agricultural economist, with a research focus on renewable energy, sustainable/conservation agriculture, food security, climate-smart agriculture, the green economy, poverty reduction strategies and rural development in Sub-Saharan Africa.
His research focus is complemented by a passion for development issues. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in agriculture and Master of Science degree in agricultural economics from Texas A & M University-Kingsville, Texas, USA, in 1980 and 1982, respectively; as well as PhD in agricultural economics from the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria in 2006. His professional, academic and research experience covers multi-disciplinary issues, including project design, management, implementation and monitoring in food/agriculture, entrepreneurship education and allied research at both national and international levels.
He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, both inside and outside Nigeria. He is also member of editorial boards in several academic journals.

Kristin Kaye is an award-winning author and teacher whose work sits at the intersection of nature, narrative and spirituality. Her eco-literary, coming of age novel Tree Dreams was the 2018 WINNER, International Books Awards: YA Fiction and 2019 FINALIST NextGen Indie Book Awards: Regional Fiction. Author Michael Meade wrote, “Kristin Kaye’s coming of age novel artfully places her young heroine in the midst of the burning questions facing the entire world, such as climate change and culture wars.”
Research for Kristin’s environmental writing has taken her across the US including deep into the woods on expeditions to help measure the biggest tree of each species for the US National Big Tree Registry; to interview foresters, loggers and state and federal employees and to a treesit in California, sleeping on a platform 100-feet high, with radical environmentalists where they were living dangerously in order to protect the redwoods.
Tree Dreams has given rise to a global tree tagging campaign that celebrates the myriad ways we are connected to the natural world, to each other and to our future. Teachers have adapted Tree Dreams for the classroom and standards-aligned lesson plans are available at treedreams.net. Kristin has taught writing and eco-storytelling workshops across the U.S. including at the American Library Association, National Science Teachers Association, the California Academy of Sciences, the California Association of Environmental and Outdoor Educators and at the Young Artists Institute at Southern Oregon University. She is the recipient of a Panta Rhea Foundation grant to support bringing Tree Dreams into schools. kristinkaye.com | treedreams.net