Kathleen Lynch, founding member and Executive Director of Isla, began her international odyssey when, at the age of 15, she moved to Greystones, Ireland. She lived and worked there for seven years and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin with a degree in history, psychology and classical civilization. After graduation, Kathy returned to the US to work in international education at the University of Kentucky. In 1985 she headed back overseas to study at the Ruprecht Karl's Universitat in Heidelberg, Germany. In addition to learning German there, she also met her husband and fellow traveler, Carl Hammerdorfer. The two of them served as Peace Corps Volunteers in Mali, West Africa. An agricultural volunteer, Kathy worked with local farmers and gardeners on new crops, improved production and solar drying of mangos and on health education. After Peace Corps, Kathy worked for the USDA's Cochran Fellowship Program, selecting participants and designing training for agribusiness entrepreneurs from the former communist countries. This opened new vistas for Kathy and led to her taking a position as Program Director for ACDI/VOCA in Warsaw Poland where she and her family lived from 1992 to 1996.

After enrolling her children in a Montessori school, Kathy's career changed directions. Over the past ten years she has focused on early childhood education, working as a teacher at Keystone Montessori in Phoenix, Arizona, the Anglo American School in Sofia, Bulgaria and Treehouse Montessori in Fort Collins, Colorado. Kathy earned her Montessori certification from the Montessori Center International in London. She currently resides in Fort Collins, Colorado with her husband and three sons, Christian, Matthew and Kyle.

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Paige Noon, Isla founding member, consults with and is a co-owner of North Coast Laboratories in Arcata, California. She received her B.A. in Sociology from Dickinson College and her M.S. degree in Molecular Biology from the University of New York at Albany. After seven years of laboratory work, including research positions at the New York State Health Department and the Department of Biology at the University of New York, Ms. Noon became the manager of NCL in 1985 and held this position until January 1998. During this time, she oversaw the development of the laboratory into a full service environmental laboratory. Ms. Noon has presented papers at a number of national meetings, including those of the Society of Quality Assurance, the American Chemical Society and ACIL-IAETL.

In 2001, Ms Noon traveled to India with her daughter, Elle and her husband, Barry, who was on a Fulbright fellowship. This experience opened new vistas for Paige in the international arena. Since spending six month in India, she has travelled and studied in Guatemala and Mexico. Presently, Ms. Noon resides in Fort Collins, Colorado with her husband, youngest daughter, and several exchange students, and is very active in local politics, yoga and various charitable causes.

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Carl Hammerdorfer is the Director of the Global Social Sustainable Enterprise program at Colorado State University. An entrepreneur with twenty years of experience internationally and domestically, Carl began his international career working at the grass-roots level as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali, West Africa. Carl trained Malians in improved well-digging and stabilization and was a health and sanitation educator. Working with his wife, Kathy, and other PCVs, he wrote and produced songs on health and sanitation that played for several years on Radio Mali.

Since his Peace Corps service, Carl has held a number of international positions, including water sanitation consultant in Cote d'Ivoire, Country Director in Warsaw, Poland and Peace Corps Country Director in Sofia, Bulgaria. In addition to his international work, Carl has extensive experience forming and launching cooperatives internationally and domestically. He was co-founder of Cooperative Solutions and the Main Street Cooperative Group in Phoenix, Arizona.

His current passion is in developing and applying enterprise solutions that solve chronic development challenges in base of pyramid markets to produce triple bottom-line results. He is fluent in German, French and Bulgarian and speaks passable Bambara. He lives with his wife Kathy (RPCV Mali '90) and their three sons in Fort Collins, Colorado.

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Ekaterina Ignatova, Program Director in Bulgaria, is an educator, global thinker and international manager. She holds a Master's degree from Sofia University, Bulgaria, followed by post-graduate studies in European integration. Ms. Ignatova has served as Board Member and Director of Lamartine, a private foundation for early education in foreign languages and culture. She enjoyed the opportunity to manage one of the first public-private practices of its kind in Bulgaria from the germ of an idea to a fully functioning organization.

Ekaterina is energized by 'difference-making' experiences in multicultural communities. She supervised the implementation of CRS-Bulgaria's "Education" program. She was thrilled to be part of Habitat for Humanity's project in Bulgaria for two years and to celebrate the completion of the first shelter for eight homeless families - a first two-story Habitat building in Sofia. Ms. Ignatova is a founding member and past-President of the Lions Club Sofia and sponsored the Leo Club of Sofia, the youth branch of the Lions. In June 2007, young Leos formed the volunteers' group of 'Give the Gift of Sight' campaign in Sofia and facilitated an eye-screening program for 13,000 disadvantaged people with visual problems. In May 2008, Ekaterina was elected as a Board Member of the newly formed Association of Bulgarian Lions Clubs and coordinator for the relations with LCIF.

She is currently Executive Director of Referendum BG, a public interest not-for-profit that fights corruption in the newest EU member state. Ms. Ignatova is the mother of Anastasia (23) and Ivan (21), both students at New Bulgarian University.

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Rosemary K. Mahoney. Prior to becoming chief executive officer of CoopMetrics , Rosemary Mahoney worked as a consultant on international cooperative development projects and cooperative business development projects in the United States.

At present, Ms. Mahoney serves on the boards of directors of the National Cooperative Business Association, National Cooperative Grocers Association, and Thanexus, Inc. She formerly served on boards of directors of the NCB (formerly known as the National Cooperative Bank), NCB Capital Impact, dotCoop, and the Cooperative Development Institute.

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Eric Younger has worked and studied in the field of sustainable economic development for fifteen years. Eric earned a Master's degree from Thunderbird (the American School for International Management). He focused on issues of sustainable development and its influence on the social, political and economic development issues in Latin America. Eric served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Papua New Guinea where he taught Mathematics and consulted with the local community on sustainable forestry projects. Following his Peace Corps Experience, Eric ran an NGO on the Navajo Reservation that focused on sustainable development by integrating health, literacy and economic development projects to address a wide range of needs of local native families.

After five years on the reservation, Eric's international itch returned, taking him to Sofia, Bulgaria where he served as Associate Peace Corps Director for Administration. In this role he worked with over 400 volunteers to help assure that their two years of volunteer service were relevant, productive and safe. Eric's current position as Executive Director and CFO for the Foundation for Sustainable Development focuses on bringing interns, small grants and focused technical training to small grass roots organizations in support of their development work. Eric's interests include microfinance, cooperatives' role in development and the creation and growth of NGOs. Eric and his wife Heidi also have the full time job of raising two young boys Kai and Zachary.

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