Chris was the RVI Finance Director from July 2016 to February 2017 and a Trustee since February 2017. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (FCMA). His experience of finance was largely developed in the commercial sector, working in retail and wholesale companies, followed by the Co-operative movement and the charity sector. His time in the charity sector took him initially to a small sight-loss charity based near London, then into Amnesty International and Merlin (Medical Relief International). Merlin merged with Save the Children in 2014, and Chris helped to see the merger through.
Governance
RVI is governed by a board of trustees drawn from the body of RVI Fellows. The Rift Valley Institute was co-founded in 2001 by John Ryle, who was Executive Director of the Institute until 2017. John is Legrand Ramsey Professor of Anthropology at Bard College, NY. He has worked as a long-term social researcher in Sudan and in Brazil, as a regional analyst for aid and human rights organizations in Africa and the Middle East, and as a writer, editor and broadcaster worldwide.
A full list of RVI’s trustees is below:
Chris Maynard
Chris Maynard
RVI Trustee & Treasurer
Leben Nelson Moro
Leben Nelson Moro
RVI Trustee
Leben Nelson Moro is head of the Directorate of External Relations at the University of Juba, and teaches at the University’s Center of Peace and Development Studies. His research is on displacement and resettlement, focusing on oil-induced displacement in South Sudan, and conflicts in the Sudan-South Sudan border area. His findings have appeared in the Journal of Refugee Studies, St Anthony’s International Review, Forced Migration Review, New Internationalist and Pambazuka News; he is the author of ‘Local relations of oil development in Southern Sudan’ in Luke A. Patey and Daniel Large (eds) Sudan Looks East: China, India and the Politics of Asian Alternatives (2011).
Mary Harper
Mary Harper
RVI Trustee
Mary Harper is Africa Editor at the BBC World Service and author of Getting Somalia Wrong? Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State (2012). She is a contributor to The Economist, Granta, The Guardian, The Times and The Washington Post.
Haile Menkerios
Haile Menkerios
Haile Menkerios is the former Eritrean ambassador to Ethiopia and has worked for the UN for many years. He is currently Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan.
Hala Al Karib
Hala Al Karib
RVI Trustee
Hala Al Karib is the Regional Director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA). Born and raised in Sudan and later Canada, she currently lives in Uganda. Versed in human rights, women studies and psychology, Hala’s work specifically focuses on women and girls’ rights activism, social movement, as well as refugees, displaced persons and minority community’s challenges. She is the Editorial chief of SIHA’s Journal—Women in Islam in the Horn of Africa. In addition to SIHA, Hala has worked with numerous international organisations in Sudan, East Africa and the Horn of Africa.
Margie Buchanan-Smith
Margie Buchanan-Smith
RVI Trustee - Chair
Margie Buchanan-Smith is a freelance consultant with over thirty-years working experience in Sudan, particularly in Darfur, South Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia undertaking policy research on livelihoods, food security and humanitarian aid. She has been a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, Head of Emergencies at ActionAid, Coordinator of the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). She has authored numerous scholarly and policy publications on humanitarian action, Darfur and migration. Margie is currently a Senior Research Associate with ODI and a Visiting Fellow with the Feinstein International Center of Tufts University. She became a Trustee of the Rift Valley Institute in September 2019.
Sharath Srinivasan
Sharath Srinivasan
Sharath Srinivasan is David and Elaine Potter Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Politics and International Studies, a Fellow of King’s College Cambridge, and Co-Director of the University’s Centre of Governance & Human Rights (CGHR). Sharath lived and worked in Sudan in the early 2000s and has been researching in and on the region ever since. His book, When Peace Kills Politics: International Intervention and Unending Wars in the Sudans, was published in 2021(Hurst/OUP). Alongside longstanding work on Sudan, his current research focuses on communication technology and politics, and peaceful assembly. He is co-founder of non-profit digital social research spinout, Africa’s Voices (www.africasvoices.org). Sharath was elected as a Fellow of the Rift Valley Institute in 2015 and became a Trustee in 2023. He is also a Trustee of the British Institute in Eastern Africa.
Statutory Reports
The Rift Valley Institute’s audited accounts (prepared in accordance with UK Charity Commission regulations) and independent evaluations of RVI programmes.
