OUR TEAM
Experienced leadership, rooted in Zambia.
Jason Andean
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CO-FOUNDER
Leads Tōtāra's strategy, donor engagement and direction. Twenty years across donor institutions, humanitarian leadership and development consulting in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, at country-director and senior-management level.
Nana Mpande
Company Secretary
Holds Tōtāra's legal and governance footing — the systems we built in from day one. A practising Lusaka lawyer with over fifteen years across commercial law, human rights and governance advisory.
Caroline Elliot
Senior Health and Behavioural Change Lead
Leads the health and behaviour-change work — the through-line that decides whether programmes are adopted and sustained. Nearly twenty years designing and leading adolescent health, gender and behaviour-change programmes across Africa, including work with BBC Media Action, VVOB and ActionAid.
Tōtāra’s Advisory Council provides independent technical oversight and substantiated guidance to the Board. Members are appointed on the basis of specific expertise relevant to our programme areas, and are expected to bring methodological rigour and academic depth to applied implementation challenges.
Advisory Council Chair & Founding Technical Advisor
Tōtāra's technical anchor on remote sensing and agricultural intelligence, hands-on across GNA and ZAPIR. Director of Engineering Design at the University of Auckland, specialising in remote sensing for small-plot agriculture.
Senior Funding Advisor, Advisory Council
Guides donor strategy and high-level funding engagement. Former DG ECHO Programme Officer, with two decades across humanitarian donor institutions, the UN and NATO.
Tōtāra was established by its founder together with our Zambian co-founding director, through a professional partnership built on shared values and direct operational experience in Zambia. It reflects a shared commitment to an organisation that is institutionally credible, locally rooted, and designed for long-term relevance.