DirectorSchooner Africa Fund
Cynthia Ryan is a Director of the Schooner Africa Fund, an impact investment fund based in Nairobi, Kenya that focuses on the agricultural sector in East Africa. She also is a Trustee and Senior Advisor to the Schooner Foundation.
Cynthia started the foundation with her father in 1998 and ran it until 2013 when she moved from Washington D.C. to Nairobi, Kenya. The foundation works internationally in human rights, peace & security and economic opportunity. It has multiple funding partners in a wide array of thematic and geographic areas throughout the African.
Cynthia has vast non-profit board experience including: the Fund for Global Human Rights, the Wangari Maathai Foundation, Women for Women International, SHOFCO (Shining Hope for Communities), the Nature Conservancy’s Africa Advisory Council, and the Democracy Alliance.
She is also deeply involved in the global philanthropic and investment communities as a member of the African Philanthropy Forum, ANDE-Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, TED, the African Grantmaker’s Network, the Global Philanthropy Forum, MIE-Mission Investors Exchange, and the International Human Rights Funders Group.
Cynthia received her Bachelor of Arts from the New School for Social Research in New York and a Masters of Arts from the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London in England. She was a contributing author to the book “Women, Philanthropy and Social Change: Visions for a Just Society.”