Board of Directors & Staff
Kurt Thurmaier, Board President
Kurt Thurmaier is Professor and Director of the Division of Public Administration at Northern Illinois University. His research interests include state and local public budgeting and finance, intergovernmental relations, comparative public management, and e-government, in which he has done extensive research, publication and teaching. His career includes four years in the Wisconsin State Budget Office as a budget and management analyst, a Fulbright Scholarship at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, consultant work with Polish local governments through the International City/County Management Association, and consultant work on US city-county consolidation efforts. He is a member of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at NIU, and previously served on the Latin American Studies and Russian and East European Studies faculties at the University of Kansas. He led NIU’s first study abroad trip to Tanzania in Summer 2009 and is co-founder (with his wife Jeanine) and of Tanzania Development Support. He also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for First Congregational United Church of Christ in DeKalb, Illinois.
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David Faivre, Treasurer
David Faivre is a returned Peace Corps volunteer who served in a village near Arusha, Tanzania, and a computer science specialist.
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Donald Gosnay, Board Member
Don Gosnay is a partner in Shivers, Gosnay & Greatrex, L.L.C. in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Don was a member of the first TDS volunteer trip to Musoma, Tanzania in 2009.
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Jerry Smith, Board Member
Jerry Smith is recently retired as Executive Director of the DeKalb County Community Foundation. Jerry served as the foundation’s first full-time administrator for 10 years, following a 30-year printing career. Long active in business and civic affairs, Jerry led DCCF’s asset growth to over $25 million, and was instrumental in solidifying closer collaboration between community foundations in Illinois. A founding officer of the Alliance of Illinois Community Foundations, Smith also served on the Board of Directors of Midwest Community Foundation Ventures (MCFV). Now assuming limited consulting opportunities, Smith is on the faculty of the Council on Foundations’ Center for Community Foundation Excellence. Smith is a graduate of Northern Illinois University, where he remains involved in many campus activities, including Huskie Athletics and the school’s Lifelong Learning Institute. He and his wife Ging reside in DeKalb. Away from the office, he is known to partake of good food, good wine and any college or pro football game that happens to be on T.V.
Tracey Swanson, Vice-President
Tracey Swanson is a Web Marketing Specialist for the Alumni Relations and Development Offic of the University of Chicago. He has an Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Northern Illinois in Nonprofit Management and a B.A. in International Relations and French from Lake Forest College. Tracey was a member of the first TDS volunteer trip to Musoma, Tanzania in 2009. In addition to his work with TDS, Tracey is an active volunteer with Architecture for Humanity-Chicago and a member of the Chicago Young Nonprofit Professionals Network (YNPN) and the American Society for Public Administration.
Tricia DeBoo, Board Member
Tricia DeBoo grew up in a suburb of Chicago and began a career as an RN in Chicago. After she married she moved to Pittsburgh, PA where she lived for 23 years. While there she raised two sons and a daughter, earned a Masters Degree in Public Management at Carnegie Mellon University, continued to work in the medical profession, volunteered in the community, and served on the Board and as President of a local civic association. When she returned to Illinois she changed careers and established a real estate management company in partnership with her husband, Peter Schram. She volunteered for Habitat for Humanity locally, including 6 years on the Board of Directors, with 3 years as President of the local affiliate. She has been volunteering with TDS since 2009 assisting with fundraising and publicity. She is one of the volunteers who traveled to Nyegina Tanzania in July 2011.
Robert Mitchell, Board Member
Robert Mitchell was a volunteer on the first TDS trip to Nyegina, Tanzania in 2009, along with his wife, Cheryl Jensen, and their two teenage children. The experience–helping to lay the foundation of a girls’ dormitory, side-by-side with Nyegina students, including many of the girls who will be living in the dorm, and seeing them work to build their own educational opportunities–was so inspiring and fulfilling that Robert and his family returned in 2011 to help see the project completed. Robert lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Mary Nehring, Intern
Mary Nehring is a Master of Public Administration Program at Northern Illinois University. She brings considerable experience to the internship from her previous employment with the American Democracy Project at Winona State and as an intern with U.S. Senator Herb Kohl. Her international experience includes time spent as a volunteer at a social development center at the Askar refugee camp in the West Bank. Mary says she is “very excited to work for TDS because I believe it is a great opportunity to work on a project that will have an everlasting effect on people.”