Our Team

Nicolas Kröger, Director, Humanitarian Leadership Academy

Nicolas holds a Masters in Public Administration and has over 10 years experience working on large humanitarian and development programmes in Zimbabwe, Tajikistan, Sudan and Timor-Leste. He has worked with NGOs, UN agencies as well as donor governments. He is a French-German national and have been living in the UK (in between placements abroad) for the past 7 years.

Jill Nicholson, Strategic Partnerships Adviser, Humanitarian Leadership Academy

Prior to working in the charity sector, Jill was a secondary school teacher teaching socio-political studies to young people aged 11- 18 years. Since then she has gained extensive experience over the last six years supporting and managing grassroots organisations in India and East Africa. This has included diverse mandate of programming, including education, livelihoods, rights and leadership and health.

Roselle Rasay, Executive Director, CODE-NGO

Roselle is the Executive Director of the Caucus of Development NGO Networks (CODE-NGO), the largest coalition of Civil Society Organizations (CSO) dedicated to social development in the Philippines, composed of 12 CSO networks representing 1,600 development NGOs, people’s organizations and cooperatives across the country. Prior to that, she has been the coalition’s Program Specialist for Membership from 2006 to 2013 and Deputy Executive Director from 2013 to 2017.

Since 2014, Roselle has managed CODE-NGO’s disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) CSO advocacy and capacity building initiative called “Advancing CSO Engagement in DRMM (ACED) Project.” To date, this initiative has trained 107 NGO leaders on DRRM, has a ready pool of 30 DRRM trainers and has set up CSO-led disaster coordination hubs in 10 regions in the Philippines, all these after thoughtful lessons from the impact of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. This initiative has established CODE-NGO as a resource institution on DRRM and locally-led humanitarian action in the Philippines.

Prior to her work in the civil society sector, Roselle served in government at various capacities and in various agencies. She managed a P1.2 billion multi-agency government project called “Computers for Public High Schools” for the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry, in partnership with the Department of Science and Technology and Department of Education. The project distributed 30,000 desktop computers to 2,000 public high schools from 2001 to 2003, which became the catalyst for mainstreaming computer education in public schools. Roselle also served as Legislative Staff Officer for the Representative of Capiz at the House of Representatives from 1997 to 2001; as Researcher for the University of the Philippines-Diliman College of Education for the development of the Functional Literacy Test, now being used as accreditation tool for the Department of Education’s Alternative Learning Systems from 1994 to 1997; and as Philosophy Instructor at the Philippine Military Academy in 1992 to 1993.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in Social Science from the University of the Philippines-Baguio City and 30 units of master in public administration from the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

Dong Waña, Director, CHLI

Dong was Center Director of the Philippines Academy Center of the Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA) during HLA’s global transition to a new business model from maintaining Academy-owned centers to working with local Affiliates. In the Philippines, Dong steered the process that led to the selection of CODE-NGO as the Academy’s affiliate in the country. Dong then joined CODE-NGO to allow for a smooth transition and to set up the Center for Humanitarian Learning and Innovation.

Prior to joining the Academy, he was Program Director of the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction – Regional Center for Asia (IIRR-RCA). Before that, Dong spent almost 24 years with Plan International, one of the leading international child-centered development organizations.

Dong helped strengthen the capacity of Plan International in the Philippines on disaster risk management by leading the development of its first Disaster Preparedness and Response Protocols and its Disaster Risk Management Strategy. As head of programs of Plan Philippines, he led both development and humanitarian programming for the organization from 2006 – 2014.

Ruth Ramirez, Learning Solutions Manager

Ruth has more than eleven years experience as a facilitator and project management in the areas of academic and non-government organizations.

John Joel “JJ” De Guzman, Learning Solutions Developer

JJ has five years experience in learning and project management in the field of both government and non-government organizations. He is currently the Learning Solutions Developer of The Center part of his tasks are working with partners, resource persons, and stakeholders to ensure that learning interventions are apt for the partner organizations and their learners. He specializes in learning analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation for various learning methodologies. Prior to CHLI, he worked with the Senate of the Philippines together with the Department of Agriculture in designing and delivering a Young Farmers advocacy and learning program. He also worked with the Department of Interior and Local Government under the Local Government Academy wherein he was part of the project team that assessed and developed capacity building programs for Civil Society Organizations. Presently, he is now taking his Master’s Degree in Distance Education at the University of the Philippines – Open University.