RoseAnn Rotandaro is Founder and Executive Director of The Village Link. RoseAnn served in the Peace Corps from 1977-1979 in Sierra Leone where she lived in Pujehun and Golu, both in the Southern province. During her stay in Golu, RoseAnn invited a local family to live with her in her PC-provided house. This fostered a close familial relationship that led to her current philanthropic efforts and her inspiration to launch The Village Link.

Currently, RoseAnn is a co-founder and member of the consulting firm Cherokee Group LLC, which provides specialized business services to emerging companies in Silicon Valley. Prior to Cherokee Group, RoseAnn co-founded Virtual Law Partners LLP, now known as VLP Law Group, ("VLP") with Craig W. Johnson and Andrea Chavez. She served as the law firm’s first president and an executive director. RoseAnn, with Johnson and Chavez, developed the firm from inception, hiring 40 law partners as well as personnel for the technology, finance and administrative divisions of the firm.

Prior to VLP, RoseAnn founded Armor Legal Counsel, a boutique law firm that represented high tech companies. Before Armor, she held the position of VP & General Counsel for two pre-IPO technology companies, Equator Technologies, Inc. and BenefitStreet, Inc., where she was in charge of all legal affairs. RoseAnn also practiced with the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto for six years. Her 18-year law practice has covered a broad range of general corporate, securities, and transactional matters, including venture capital financings, public offerings, and mergers and acquisitions.

RoseAnn received her J.D. from Stanford University Law School. She also holds a Bachelors in Environmental Studies from East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania and an M.A.T. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Originally from Canada, Colleen was raised in a small east coast town with just 1500 people - less people than the village of Golu, TVL’s first village. In 2006 she earned her Bachelors of Business Management from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Soon after she pursued a marketing career in Toronto. After a 6 years working with top brands such as Microsoft, Samsung, Wonderbread and Canada’s National Lottery Brands - Lotto Max & 6/49 she moved to the U.S. in 2012. Once in the US, Colleen embarked on a career change into the nonprofit sector with the Global Women’s Leadership Network (“GWLN”), a Santa Clara University fiscal sponsored non-profit. She lead their marketing and operations transition from a fiscal sponsored non-profit to an independent 501(c)3, working closely with the Marketing Director and Executive Director. She rebranded GWLN, built and managed their new website, and brought brand consistency across all marketing channels. During her free time you'll catch Colleen by the coast somewhere taking photos. She's passionate about photography and rural development and believes it's a great platform to share stories. You'll see many of her photos and stories throughout this site and TVL's social media channels. With a hybrid of experience in for-profit and non-profit, Colleen's experiences align with our approach to rural sustainability development. 

Ellen E. Jamason is a non-profit leader, attorney and businesswoman with over 30 years of experience in real estate, law, government and community service.    Most recently she served as CEO of Pacific Vision Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to bringing eye care to underserved communities. Her varied career includes working as partner at two top national law firms, an executive at Cisco Systems, Inc., and a member of a boutique investment firm focusing on distressed real estate projects and related municipal bonds.   Prior to attending law school, Ellen served as Deputy Division Director at the National Security Agency.   

Ellen is active in the San Francisco Bay Area community.  She is a past Board Chair of Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco and currently a board member of Mercy Housing California.  Ellen earned a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Wesleyan University, and studied at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan.  Ellen holds a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, where she was a member of the Order of the Coif and Senior Executive Editor of the California Law Review.

Ellen lives on the San Francisco Peninsula with her husband, Giacomo Marini.

Evelyn Lewis

Evelyn Lewis is the Co-Director of Village Link, bringing with him a breadth of experience and a wealth of information and ties to important resources in Sierra Leone as The Village Link continues to grow. He has served as Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SBTS Group, an ICT consulting firm for the last 12 years; Evelyn also owns TrainingSol, a training company and jobs portal. An avid tech-preneur, since starting his first business at age 12, developing his passion for expanding ICT into underserved communities, he has been involved in numerous technological initiatives. He was a core functionary in formulating the Sierra Leone Presidential ICT task force, which further wrote Sierra Leone’s ICT policy and lobbied to connect Sierra Leone to the outside world through submarine fiber optics. His primary company, SBTS Group currently has representation in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Washington D.C, USA and Pune, India with an outlook for global expansion, was featured in a Financial Times Publication, “This is Africa,” and was responsible for implementing the first commercial e-learning solution in Sierra Leone and online jobs portal and also the first biometric pension system in West Africa.

Prior to founding SBTS Group, Evelyn earned valuable experiences through proprietorship experiences in many forms of ICT and executive experiences with Companies such as Computer Consultants Corporation in Washington D.C with prior experiences in corporate I.T recruitment such as MacArthur Associates. Evelyn was responsible for team development and client relationship for the training and consulting streams with an overall responsibility stretching thousands of clients including DOD, World Bank, SHRM, and more. Mr. Lewis concluded a B.A. in Integrative Studies with a concentration in International Relations and a focus on Technology & Law from GMU and A.A in International Studies from NVCC, and is currently a member of the National ICT Council and acts as outgoing Chairperson for the Internet Society – Sierra Leone Chapter.

Michael McGirr

Past National Program Lead, USDA - National Institute of Food and Agriculture
TVL Board of Directors

A National Program Leader for 19 years in the Center for International Programs at USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), he was responsible for developing and managing foreign and domestic projects in collaboration with U.S. universities. From 1990 to 1996, Mr. McGirr managed the agency’s Polish/American Extension Project, which involved collaboration with 31 land-grant institutions. He went on to develop agency initiatives in the former Soviet Republics, Central America, Africa, and Iraq. From 2011-2014, he oversaw the Afghanistan Agricultural Extension Project. While at NIFA, he also launched the National Initiative to Internationalize Extension – an effort aimed at strengthening the global dimension of state and local extension programs here in the United States.

Mr. McGirr has served on the boards of several non-profit organizations, including Friends of Sierra Leone (FoSL) and Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief (CPAR); and, in 2013-14, was President of the Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development (AIARD). He began his career in international development as a Peace Corps volunteer in Pujehun District, Sierra Leone. He received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a Master’s in International Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies.