Friends of Nigeria Board

Jim Clark, Nigeria 12, served from June 1964 to June 1966, in Umuduru in the then Eastern Region of Nigeria as an agriculture/community development specialist promoting Young Farmers Clubs, the use of fertilizer and other beneficial farming practices. After returning to his native North Carolina, he became an educator, retiring as a school principal in 2005. Two years later he became a small business owner, purchasing and operating the restaurant/event center he still owns. In addition, he served for 11 years on the North Carolina Board of Examiners of Electrical Contractors, including two terms as Chairman. During eight years on the FON board, he served as  the editor of the newsletter, as a member of the planning committees for the past three annual meetings, and has served on the projects committee and the website development committee.

Mimi Budd, Nigeria 15, taught at the Army Children’s Primary School in Kaduna and at Our Lady of Lourdes Secondary School in Uromi from 1965 to 1967. Mimi returned home to earn a master’s degree in TESOL at San Francisco State College and later became an attorney and worked for several elected members of the California legislature and numerous departments of the state.  At the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs she served as chief counsel. At the Corrections Department she created rehabilitation programs in state prisons. Mimi is active in Emily’s List, an organization that supports pro-choice Democratic women candidates for elective office, the Brady Campaign United Against Gun Violence, and in several neighborhood organizations focused on public policy. As a Director of FON since 2017, she has served on the Maternal Health Committee.

Warren Keller, Nigeria 23, served in Uli with his wife, Jody, teaching chemistry and maths for about 9 months in 1966-67 before being evacuated as the Biafra War began. They served a second Peace Corps year teaching in Uganda before returning home to Berkeley in 1968. After completing an MS in chemistry at UC Berkeley, he spent the next 32 years working for IBM as a systems engineer and a data base instructor. They have three children and four grandchildren. Interests include family, hiking and backpacking, travel, and community volunteer activities. He has been a FON board member since 2006, serving as newsletter editor for 5 years and as treasurer since 2016. He and Jody joined FON's 2008 back to Nigeria trip, enabling them to visit the north for the first time as well as a short trip to Uli.

Mike Goodkind, Nigeria 16, served on an oil palm cooperative project near Abakaliki, which became part of Biafra.  He left Nigeria in 1967 after two years. For about 10 years Mike worked as a journalist with a two-year interruption for military service in Vietnam and Oakland. At Associated Press Mike covered politics, served as an editor and wrote a weekly national TV column. He became FON secretary in 2017 after serving as a director and four-term president a decade ago. He was a public relations officer for Stanford Medical Center from 1981 to 2002, after which he ran a small communications business and co-authored a health book, etc. Recently he worked and volunteered for California State Parks and two city literacy programs. Mike lives in Menlo Park, CA.

Peter Hansen, Nigeria 27, co-founded Friends of Nigeria in 1996 (with Cathy Onyemelukwe, Nigeria 4). He has served on the FON board ever since. Currently the newsletter editor, for many years Hansen served as treasurer and database manager. For 40 years until retirement in 2007, he taught chemistry at the University of Ife, Northwestern College (Iowa), Makerere University (Kampala) and the University of Iowa. Hansen is active in the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council and the local Democratic Party.

Chris Clarkson, Nigeria 22, taught Biology at Government Girls College, Kano, from 1966 through 1968.  He has visited Kano twice since, first in 1973 at the end of a hitchhiking excursion through East Africa, and again in 1998 as an election observer. Since leaving the Peace Corps Chris spent several years as a teacher, first in Biology, later in Physics.  He completed graduate programs in public health and water resources engineering, followed by 25-year career as an engineering consultant.

Monique LeBlanc, Nigeria 15, taught English and French at Government College, Kaduna for two years starting in 1965.  Upon her return to the States in 1967, she began a 12-year employment with the Los Angeles Unified School District where she taught French, Spanish and ESL  In 1984, Monique graduated from the UCLA Dental School and joined the National Health Service Corps for three years, practicing in underserved community-based clinics in El Mirage, AZ and Ramona, CA. Preferring to treat patients with limited access to dental care, she became a staff dentist in an LA County Comprehensive Health Center and taught dental hygiene students part time. At FON she serves on the Maternal Health Committee.

Ned Greeley, Nigeria 23, taught in a high school between Enugu and Abakaliki in 1966 to 1967 before being evacuated during the Biafran War. After Peace Corps Ned taught a few years in DC and Uganda, did graduate study in DC, field research in rural Kenya, and earned a PhD in Anthropology. USAID subsequently recruited him for the Foreign Service as Regional Social Science Advisor for East and Southern Africa. He mainly worked on design, implementation and evaluation of development strategies and programs. He met his wife Monica Newland, a teacher in Group 18, in Nigeria.  Greeley and his wife, a career international school administrator, have lived and worked 40 years overseas in Uganda, Kenya (for 17 years), Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma, Egypt, and recently, Ecuador. Their last posting was Nairobi where Greeley led the USAID team addressing good governance and cross-border conflict management in the Greater Horn of Africa.  After leaving USAID in 2004, Greeley worked with the nonprofit World Education Inc. in DC, Cairo,and Jakarta until retiring in 2012 in the DC area.

Clemmie Gilpin, Nigeria 25, spent his Peace Corps years, 1966 to 1968, working with agricultural cooperatives in Bida, where he designed and taught a course on cooperative development at the local farm training center. Shortly after returning from Nigeria he led a group of high school students who traveled to Nigeria to work in a rural development project near Ibadan. After Peace Corps, he earned a master’s degree in International Affairs from Ohio University that focused on Africa and International Development. He joined the Penn State Harrisburg faculty in 1971 before receiving a PhD from Penn State University Park. For twelve years he served with the U.S. War College, Carlisle, PA, in its International Fellows Program, assisting officers and families to adjust to the local community and culture. Three of the twelve officers he worked with were from Nigeria. He is a member of several boards and commissions, including the Pennsylvania Prostate Cancer Coalition, Foreign Policy Association of Harrisburg, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, Minority Advisory Commission. He also led a Rotary Club fundraiser to purchase wheel chairs for polio victims in Nigeria.

Spencer Ralston, Nigeria 13, served as a  teacher in Nawfia in the Eastern Region from 1965 to 1966, leaving just prior to the Biafran War. When he returned to the U.S., Ralston worked as an epidemiologist for the Communicable Disease Center of the U.S. Public Health Service while earning his master’s in Health Planning and Administration from New York University. After graduate school he became Executive  Director of two 501(c)(3) organizations dedicated to bringing health care personnel and services to rural, underserved communities in Tennessee and Oregon. Ralston spent the remainder of his health care career as chief operating officer of hospitals in several western states. After retirement in 2006, he and his wife moved to Santa Fe where Ralston became a realtor -- a job in which he remains very active.

Godwin Ndukwe may possibly be the only U.S. tax man who is also a traditional chief in the Ohuhu Community in Umuahia, Abia State, where he attended the high school where another FON Director, David Koren, was a pioneer teacher. Ndukwe became active in FON by helping to lead the planning for the group's annual meeting in Austin, near his home in Houston, in 2019. Before becoming a senior IRS agent in Houston, Ndukwe served as a systems accountant at the USDA National Finance Center in New Orleans and in various other finance positions in the public and private sector. A graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana, Ndukwe received his MBA in Finance & Human Resources from Florida Institute of Technology. He is married to a fellow Nigerian, Onyi, and has four children, two girls aged 9, a daughter, 36 and a son, 32.

David Koren, Nigeria 9, taught English and general science at Ohuhu Community Grammar School near Umuahia from Jan. 1, 1964 to 1966. After Peace Corps service he worked as a counselor in an adult education program in Buffalo, NY., and then as a rehabilitation counselor at Buffalo Psychiatric Center. He also worked as a UNICEF volunteer on the Biafran airlift, performing tasks that included aircraft mechanics and flight cargo manager. Later, Koren returned to school at the University of Pittsburgh, earning a master’s degree in physics and then worked 10 years as an optical design engineer making lenses for industrial infrared lasers. David is currently active in his local community on the township planning commission and the Friends of the Spring Valley Park. He is an amateur astronomer and maintains a 6-acre mini farm with his wife and two tractors.