Who We Are

Board members:

Board Chair: 

Carrie A. Miles, Ph.D.

Carrie Miles holds a doctorate in social and organizational psychology from the University of Chicago, and wrote her thesis on religion, social change, and the roles of women and men, a subject on which she continues to do research. Her new book, The Redemption of Love:  Rescuing Marriage and Sexuality from the Economics of a Fallen World  was published by Brazos Press in 2006.  Her previous book, Male and Female in Christ, has been reprinted in Kampala and is being translated into Kirundi, the local African language spoken in Rwanda and Burundi.  Dr. Miles is a senior research fellow at the Center for the  Economic Study of Religion at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and a non-resident fellow at the Institute for the Studies of Religion at Baylor University, Waco, Texas.  She is married to economist Laurence Iannaccone, and they have two children.

Treasurer: 

Sarah Nutter, Ph.D.

Sarah Nutter is a professor of accounting at George Mason University.  She is married to David Nutter and the mother of three grown sons.

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Database administrator/missionary

Patty Houser

Patty Houser is a speaker, teacher and defender of the Christian faith and has a passion for helping women and children discover God's uncontainable love for them through the thin, crisp pages of the Scriptures. She also has a passion for teaching them how to share and defend their faith in a culture that uses the end of reason as a reason for rejecting God’s truth.  Patty holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Minnesota and is currently working on her Masters of Arts degree in Christian Apologetics at Biola University in La Mirada, California.  Patty is a member of the International Society of Christian Apologetics and is also a graduate of the Proverbs 31 Ministries' 2005 and 2006 Speaker's and Writer’s Conference.  Patty resides in the Washington D.C. area with her husband and son and loves to study and play classical piano.  She also enjoys hiking, biking and traveling with her family in God’s extraordinary creation.

Intern

Chelsea Rodgers

Chelsea Rodgers attends Trinity Christian School in Northern Virginia and is a senior this year.  When she graduates, she plans on majoring in illustration/animation and minoring in creative writing. Because of her love for art and writing, she is the editor of her school’s annual yearbook.  She also leads a children's bible study in her neighborhood and has done so for several years.  In addition, because her father worked on Capitol Hill for the past 16 years, she became involved in politics at an early age and worked for the National Republican Committee by making phone calls and distributing literature for up-coming elections.

Missionaries:

 

Linda M. Ikeda, M.A., LMFC

Linda Ikeda has been a licensed marriage, family and child therapist since 1993. She has been in the Bay Area since 1978 and was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. She earned her Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing from the University of Washington in 1972 and worked as a pediatric and newborn intensive care nurse in a variety of hospital settings for fifteen years. She keeps her RN license active and up to date. Linda earned her master’s degree in counseling from the University of San Francisco in 1989. She also has studied at Fuller Theological Seminary, Regent’s University and Princeton Seminary. She has received specialty training in EMDR. Other areas of specialty training received are: play therapy, sand tray therapy, working with survivors of sexual abuse, dealing with issues of domestic violence, and narrative approaches to therapy. Linda has led women's’, adolescents’, staff and children’s groups. She has conducted workshops for church retreats, parenting groups, counseling interns and trainees, and multi-cultural community centers on a variety of topics, some of which are : self-esteem, parenting of adolescents, parenting of special needs children, attachment disorder, adolescent psychopathology and integrating faith with psychology. Though she works with a variety of cases, she is especially fond of working with children, adolescents and adult survivors of childhood trauma. In addition to her clinical work, Linda has been involved in a teaching, training and therapy ministry with the Chi Rho Corporation which offers assistance to the House of New Life, an orphanage for HIV+ children, in Constanta, Romania. Her Christian faith informs all that she is and all that she does. She and her husband have been married over 28 years and have two grown sons.  She taught in Uganda in 2007 and 2008.

 

Betsy Anderson

Betsy Anderson is a spiritual director in San Jose, California.  Specializing in spiritual formation, Betsy accompanied EIM to Uganda in 2008.

 

 

 

President, Empower International/Uganda

 

Margaret Kiswiriri

Margaret Kiswiriri is the president of Empower International Uganda.  A midwife, she operates a childbirth clinic in Kampala.  She is a board member of World Shine Ministries in Uganda and has been active in ministry all her life.  She married to a physician and has grown children.

 

Pan African Program Coordinator

Frank Tweheyo

Frank Tweheyo is senior pastor of the Church Fellowship Church in Kabale, Uganda, and regional overseer for World Evangelical Ministries.  He has traveled to Rwanda, Burundi, and Malawi teaching Empower material on family harmony.  Frank is married to Phobice, who is also a pastor.

 

International Affiliates

World Shine Ministries, Kampala, Uganda

President: Medad Birungi
Women's Programs: Connie Birungi

Burundi

 

 

Dr. Pierre Kwisiri

 

 

Archdiocese of Burundi, Anglican Church of Burundi

Family Empowerment Project    

directors: 

       Rev. Ribakare Pontien,

       Rev. Inamahoro Yvette

RaTas, Finland

Anne Mikkola

LEADIA, Kampala, Uganda

Emmanuel Akatukunda

Webmaster 

Andy Weeks

© Empower International Ministries 2007