Our Team
Laurel Runcie, President
Laurel grew up in Upstate New York and attended Dartmouth College to major in history. While enrolled at Dartmouth, she spent a great deal of time across the Connecticut River in Vermont teaching at the Montshire Museum of Science. After graduating in 2006 with a BA in History cum laude with high honors in her major, she joined Teach For America and taught 4th grade in a high-needs school in the Las Vegas Valley. After her two years in the corps in Las Vegas, she knew that she wanted to remain involved in the fight for educational equality. Rather than continuing to teach, she decided to pursue a career working for educational non-profit organizations. She lives with her husband Tom in Crested Butte, Colorado and works for the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. She was recently elected president of World Partners in Education and looks forward to crafting a logic model and programming based on the needs we have identified through our first three years as a non-profit organization.
Caitlin Crowe, Vice President and Co-Founder
Caitlin grew up in York, Maine and graduated from Dartmouth College in 2008 with a major in geography and a minor in public policy, with a focus on social justice. She participated in three Dartmouth study abroad programs: a foreign language program in France, a geography program in Prague, and an internship in Ghana at the Manye Academy. During her time at Manye, Caitlin saw the difficulties and importance of providing a quality education in underserved areas. Upon her return, Caitlin became one of the founding members of World Partners in Education. Caitlin spent two years after graduation working in private equity and venture capital lending in Boston. She currently works as an investment banking analyst at Raymond James in Boston.
Jennifer Bordeau, Treasurer
Jen grew up in New Hampshire and graduated from Dartmouth College in 2006 with an AB in Geography. In addition, almost a quarter of Jen’s coursework at Dartmouth was in mathematics. After graduation, Jen moved to Boston and applied her love of numbers and interest in nonprofit health care administration to a position in finance at Partners HealthCare, the parent company founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Jen’s first role at Partners focused on governmental Medicare and Medicaid cost reporting, and she has since transitioned to an analyst role in the research management department. Jen joined the WPE board as Treasurer in 2010, where she has been applying her knowledge of nonprofit fiscal management. Jen plans to pursue a Masters of Business Administration with a focus on nonprofit management.
Catherine Armstrong, Secretary
Catherine received her B.A. from Dartmouth College in 2010, earning High Honors in Economics and minors in French and Psychology. During her time at Dartmouth, she studied abroad in Paris, and interned with non-profits in Atlanta, New York, and Johannesburg. Her senior thesis investigated the relationship between tobacco farming and educational decisions by school-aged children in Malawi. Her time at Dartmouth helped Catherine develop a passion for international development, specifically in the realms of youth empowerment and education. After graduation, Catherine served as a consultant for World Partners in Ghana for one year before joining the WPE Board of Directors.
Nana Ampadu, Recruiting & Human Resources Director
Nana is 2009 graduate of Dartmouth College. During her undergraduate years she spent 9 weeks at Manye Academy in the winter of 2008 as a volunteer teacher. Her volunteer experience inspired her to continue to be a part of Manye Academy. This inspiration led her to collaborate with other Dartmouth students and alumni who sought to connect back to their volunteer experience in Ghana by starting World Partners in Education. This collaboration led to the greater vision and mission of World Partners in Education. Nana currently works at the Yale Consultation Center as an Academic Advisor with Yale-Bridgeport GEAR UP Partnership.
Benjamin Schwartz, Country Director and Co-Founder
Ben grew up in Columbia, Maryland in a family of teachers. His mother taught the children of US military men and women for 30 years. As a result, he has always been passionate about education. Ben graduated from Dartmouth College in 2006 with a major in international relations and a minor in education policy.
Ben’s work in Ghana’s Manye Academy started in 2005 and following graduation he moved to Ghana on a Lombard Fellowship from the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth. He served several important roles within the school: fifth and sixth grade teacher, mentor to at-risk teenagers, and athletic and cultural program initiator. He also went outside of these roles to inspire transformation at Manye by helping to organize a health clinic at Manye, taking the students on their first excursion around their country to learn about their heritage and natural resources, raising PTA attendance from 3 parents at his first meeting to over 60 parents at his final meeting, and working with the headmaster to invest community members in the success of the school. Ben also made many great friends at Manye—the students, brothers and sisters, parents and guardians, teachers, and staff. While there, Ben encouraged other volunteers from Dartmouth and elsewhere to join the effort—together they helped raise funds to start a library and computer lab with laptops donated by graduating seniors. Encouraged by these successes and the energy and excitement of the volunteers, Ben started World Partners in Education.
Dana Charles McCoy, Monitoring and Evaluation Director
Dana graduated from Dartmouth College in 2006 with an A.B. in Psychology and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Psychology at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education, Culture, and Human Development. At NYU, Dana’s work focuses on the development and evaluation of classroom-based curricula to promote young children’s emotional, social, and academic success. She is also interested in studying the multiple influences that children’s cultural contexts, neighborhoods, and families have on their development. Dana is currently leading WPE’s monitoring and evaluation effort.