Our team.

Karin Knutson is on the Advancing Leaders International team since 2012 and now serving as the Executive Director. While serving 18 years as a teacher, supervisor for homeschooling families, mentor and coach for new teachers; Karin has both taught and administrated in the public, private, home, and charter school sectors. She has a passion for developing teachers who encourage and draw out curiosity and creativity from their students. For six years she worked as an administrator at a K-12 public charter school. She is also a Life Coach that enjoys helping all people to walk in their calling and gifting.

Karin and her husband, Randy, have been serving with Church Resource Ministries/Novo the past four decades, pastoring, discipling and establishing new churches. Karin has played many key roles during that time: leading women’s groups, speaking at retreats, children’s ministries, and singing on worship teams. While supporting her pastor/missionary husband for over 42+ years, Karin has gained a worldwide network of friends and resources.

Karin and Randy live in Southern California and have four married children. A new role as grandparents began in March 2016. Life is never dull!

Winnifred Nakanwagi aka Winnie is a human rights activist with a niche for quality Education as a right for every child and leadership development for young adults. She has BA in Social Sciences and a Master’s degree in Human Rights. She has 14 years experience working with nonprofit organizations most of which were in the education. She draws her passion for education from her own life story growing up as an orphan. Serving underprivileged children and communities is her way of sharing her own story of hope and raising awareness of how education is a great tool for empowerment.

Janie Anderson has recently joined ALI as a collaborator, helping to develop ways to encourage critical thinking in other countries. She is a wife, mother, and grandmother. After home schooling for 10 years, she taught in private and public school for another 20 years. Since retiring in 2016 she’s been enjoying volunteering in the cause against human trafficking, traveling, and spending time with grandchildren. She has been involved in short term missions in Mexico, Uganda, Thailand, Spain, and Turkey.

Racheal is a seasoned educator with experience in both Public and Private Schools. She is self-driven, results-oriented, committed to institutional building, and clear focused on organizational growth. Her passion for teaching goes beyond the classroom; it's a lifelong commitment to fostering a love for learning and helping students develop not only academically but also as well-rounded individuals who can make a positive impact on the world. Racheal has over 12 years’ experience in educational leadership and management. She has coached, mentored and led teams which has positioned and equipped her in the education sector. Her heart beats for transformational education with a focus on young minds developing an informed curiosity and a lasting passion for learning. She believes that all a child needs to rise above the horizon is a great teacher!

Ruth Nabaasa joined the ALI team in February of 2024 as part of its operations arm and is very passionate about education specially creating safe and relaxed places for learners to thrive in the classroom, discover themselves and become who God created them to be. She believes that teachers who know God, are well supported, cared for and empowered have the potential to powerfully transform their learners’ lives. She is dedicated to mission work and seeing the gospel preached to every man, woman and child, having previously served as a missionary among the diaspora Chinese, and in the UK doing children’s and youth work. She has worked with different non-profit organizations as a teacher and youth worker and has also been teaching Business English online to adult professionals.

Shortly after retiring in 2000 as a high school principal, I was left wondering what to do with my life. In 2001, the Lord took me to Kenya on a short-term missions trip, which not only changed my life, but also offered me an opportunity to use my God-given gifts in a way I’d never imagined. On that trip, the founding director of Empowering Lives International (ELI) asked me if I would join his team as the U.S. Director of Personnel & Finance, so over the next five years, I served ELI in that capacity, as well as presenting their work to churches and colleges, training short-term mission teams, and conducting leadership training in Kenya and Uganda. I have interfaced with a variety of African organizations, training their leadership in-country and gaining insights to the culture and the needs of the people. One such organization is Hope Alive!, a nonprofit ministry focused on improving education among highly disadvantaged children in Uganda. I now serve on HA!’s U.S. Board of Directors.

During my many trips to Africa, my heart was continually drawn to the young people—the leaders of tomorrow who were being woefully equipped today. I observed that their elementary and secondary school education consisted primarily of rote memorization, with the students being given little opportunity to apply the facts they were learning. With 32 years of education in my background, God prompted me to do something about this, so in July of 2010, Advancing Leaders International (ALI) was birthed. As ALI’s Founding Director, I recruited educators who joined me in changing the face of education in African countries through improved teaching methodology, enhanced classrooms, and individualized coaching and mentoring of teachers and emerging leaders.

Tiffany’s passion for equity issues was forged in childhood and deepened by her early-career experiences as a teacher in Oakland and later as a researcher. She is passionate about leading, developing, and working with teams to expand access to opportunity within underserved communities. In her career, she has raised funds for multiple projects spanning several organizations, including Harvard’s Public Education Leadership Project, the Diverse Leaders Investment Team through New Schools Venture Fund, USAID and DFID.

In addition, Tiffany served as the Executive Director of Dignitas, an organization she co-founded to connect Kenyan informal settlements to quality education, for 10 years. During that time, she secured funding, trained teachers, influenced curriculum reform, and contributed to the prioritization of education in Kenya. Case studies from her work are published and are used in graduate courses at Harvard University and Stanford. She supports mission driven organizations and currently serves on several boards to bring her expertise to international education initiatives.

Tiffany knows the difficult, yet dynamic, process of building viable solutions to achieve equity in education. She is committed to working with transformative organizations, like Advancing Leaders International, who place people at the heart of their work. She is inspired by the possibilities to reimagine and build a more inclusive world.

Alex has a wide range of operational experience, including past work for Deluxe Branded Marketing, as the Manager of Sales Operations for their Real Estate Vertical. He previously worked as the Director of Operations at Parcel Pending, ­where he was responsible for the sales, marketing, installation, logistics, customer service and ongoing service of smart-electronic parcel lockers. As the Southern California Area Vice President, Alex helped launch CARES By Apartment Life, a Christian non-profit that provides community development teams to live onsite of large apartment communities. Alex spent his first year out of college building homes and churches with Lazarian World Homes in Armenia and Mexico. Alex is a California Real Estate Broker and holds a Business Administration degree from Point Loma Nazarene University. He currently lives in Orange County with his wife, 3 boys, and little girl.

Michelle is a veteran educator who taught in public schools in Georgia as a reading specialist, serving students in the Early Intervention Program (EIP), for over 20 years. She has a BS degree in Psychology, a K-5 teaching certificate, and a Master’s degree in Collaborative Teaching and Learning. She has won numerous awards for programs she designed and implemented while in the public-school system.

Michelle left the public schools and worked for Adventures in Missions in Gainesville Ga, where she became involved with the Greater Hope Project in the Rhino Refugee Settlement in Norther Uganda. She called Karin from Advancing Leaders International for some help with training teachers in 5 schools within the camp. They collaborated with ministries, His Sickles and the Church of Uganda, to innovate and advance the teacher training portion of the project.

Michelle is an everyday woman who is a wife, mom of 4 grown children, a teacher, a colleague, and a missionary. Her passion for education and her determination to see every child have access to knowledge assure her that life will never be boring!