Our people - Eastern Congo Initiative

Ben Affleck

In addition to a successful career as a two-time Academy Award winning actor, writer and director, Ben Affleck is also a passionate advocate and philanthropist.

In 2010, Ben co-founded Eastern Congo Initiative alongside Whitney Williams as an advocacy and funding organization focused on working with and for the people of eastern Congo. Believing that collaboration is integral to better solutions, Affleck led ECI’s acquisition of Asili, a social business enterprise providing world-class water and healthcare services in 2019. Affleck is deeply committed to public policy and the impact of multilateral cooperation. He has testified five times before both the U.S. House and Senate, advocated for Congo before the United Nations, and has met with numerous elected officials over the last decade to increase international diplomacy, understanding and support for the region.

Ben Affleck

Co Founder & Chair

Maura O'Neill

Through her work in the public, private and academic sectors, Maura O’Neill has created entrepreneurial and public-private solutions for some of the toughest domestic and global problems.

A serial entrepreneur, Maura founded four companies in the fields of energy efficiency, smart grid and info systems and billing, e-commerce and digital education. She served as Chief of Staff in the US Senate and was appointed President Obama’s first Chief Innovation Officer of the US Agency for International Development. Maura co-led USAID Forward, the Agency’s major reform initiative and oversaw 600+ global public-private partnerships. Maura is most well-known for adapting venture capital and drug discovery methods to development by co-creating the Development Innovation Venture Fund. Maura served on the White House Innovation Cohort assisting in innovation across the federal government.

Maura is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, and a Faculty Director at UC Berkeley Executive Education. She is a three-time winner of the Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Maura is CEO and Founder of The Decade Project, a nonprofit organization with the audacious goal of having American entrepreneurship and business ownership reflect the race/ ethnicity and gender of America by 2035.

Maura has a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, where her research focused on narrow-mindedness and the errors it leads to in decision-making. She has MBAs from UC Berkeley and Columbia University. She is the founding Vice Chair of the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women.

Maura O’Neill

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is a writer, foreign policy analyst, and independent journalist. He is a senior strategy and advocacy adviser at Eastern Congo Initiative.

Mr. Dizolele is a professorial lecturer in African Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, the Peter J. Duignan Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and the author of the forthcoming biography, “Mobutu: the Rise and Fall of the Leopard King” (Random House UK).

In 2006, he covered the conflict and the elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and was embedded with United Nations peacekeepers in Ituri district and South Kivu province as a reporter.

His analyses have been published in the Journal of Democracy, New York Times, Newsweek International, International Herald Tribune, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, Forbes and other outlets. A frequent commentator on African affairs, he has been a guest analyst on several radio and television programs, including PBS, NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera, and Voice of America.

Dizolele has testified before various subcommittees of the two chambers of the United States Congress. He has also testified before the United Nations Security Council.

He holds an International Master of Business Administration and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Chicago. He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and French from Southern Utah University.

Dizolele speaks several languages and is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele

Secretary

Nima Taghavi

Nima Taghavi is the Founder & CEO of Group 206, a private investment firm created in 2013.

Taghavi’s entrepreneurial journey began at a young age. Taghavi immigrated to the US from Iran when he was 9 years old, and by his early teen years, was selling video games at the Swap Meet to supplement his family’s income. This early start helped Taghavi develop a passion for business.

Taghavi turned his early entrepreneurial experience into successfully founding and exiting several enterprises throughout his career, including video game distributor SVG Distribution and video game publisher Crave Entertainment. Both SVG and Crave became market leaders and, under Crave Entertainment Group (CEG) and were sold to The Handleman Company (NYSE: HDL) in 2005. With revenues nearing $300M, CEG was the largest privately held company in the video game industry at the time. Nima was an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist in 1998, 2000 and 2004.

Taghavi was an original investor and co-founder of Solutions 2 GO (Canada), which grew from its inception in 2004 to become the largest video game distributor in North America by 2008. To optimize his investment in Solutions 2 GO (Canada), Taghavi founded its sister company Solutions 2 GO LLC (U.S.) in 2009, a video game distribution company specializing in both the brick and mortar and e-commerce retail channels. After reaching well over $1B in combined revenue, Taghavi sold his collective interests in 2017.

As a longtime owner-user and investor in industrial real estate, Taghavi co-founded investment management firm BKM Capital Partners in 2013. Soon after, Taghavi was joined by John Mack (former CEO & Chairman at Morgan Stanley) as an investor, business partner, and board advisor. Throughout Taghavi’s tenure as Chairman, BKM grew to nearly $2 billion in assets under management with more than 20 institutional investor partners. In 2020, Taghavi and Mack sold their collective ownership in BKM.

In 2018, Taghavi co-founded VoltEdge, a consumer brand company specializing in the design, development, and manufacturing of high-performance video game accessories sold through national brick & mortar and e-commerce retailers. In 2020, VoltEdge was acquired by Mexico-based GameXpress.

Taghavi established The Nima Taghavi Foundation in 2005 to support a variety of disadvantaged children’s charities and other causes. Additionally, Taghavi has been a member of the Board of Directors for Eastern Congo Initiative (founded by Ben Affleck) since 2015 and a member of the Board of Directors for The Clinton Foundation since 2018.

Nima Taghavi

Whitney Williams

Whitney serves as co-founder and Vice Chair of the Board for Eastern Congo Initiative, the first U.S.-based advocacy and grantmaking organization focused solely on working with and for the people of eastern Congo. In this role Whitney oversees millions of dollars in grants to dozens of local Congolese community-based organizations, as well as a broad U.S. and international advocacy agenda to drive good public policies relative to the DRC.

Whitney Williams

Co-Founder and Vice Chair

Ricardo Michel

Ricardo Michel is an international development expert with more than 25 years of international finance and leadership experience in both the private and public sectors. He is the Founder and CEO of Obsidian International Advisory Services, a consultancy specializing in economic growth and trade in emerging markets. Michel recently served as the Co-CEO of The Palladium Group, a global international development firm dedicated to addressing the world’s most pressing challenges through collaboration with governments, businesses, and investors.

Prior to his tenure at Palladium, Michel was the Managing Director of FHI Partners, a subsidiary of the international NGO FHI 360. In this role, he established the new subsidiary to partner directly with corporations and foundations in executing their social impact strategies. He also held the position of Executive Vice President of AMEX International, an international development consulting firm that provided high impact solutions to government agencies, NGOs, and corporations worldwide.

Michel’s extensive career includes a Presidential Appointment under President Obama, where he served as a senior official at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). At USAID, he was instrumental in driving the Agency’s strategic utilization of high-impact local and global public-private partnerships for accelerated sustainable development and led the U.S. Global Development Lab as Director of the Center for Transformational Partnerships. Additionally, while at USAID, Michel served as the Senior Advisor for Economic Growth and Trade in the Africa Bureau, where he was responsible for critical White House development policy initiatives.

Michel has a distinguished and diverse public service and private sector background. He held the positions within the Export Import Bank of the U.S. in the Project & Structured Finance Division of well as the International Business Development Officer for Africa. Michel also served as the Senior Trade and Investment Advisor for the African Development Foundation where he played a pivotal role in establishing the Foundation’s Trade & Investment initiative.

Before his tenure at USADF, Michel spent several years as an investment banker on Wall Street for JPMorgan Securities Inc., specializing in mergers and acquisitions. He began his career as a Certified Public Accountant which included working abroad for Centre Reinsurance Ltd., a finite risk reinsurance company in Bermuda, and as an auditor for Arthur Andersen, LLP in their Philadelphia and Bermuda offices.

Michel holds an MBA in Finance and International Strategic Management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated Cum Laude from Temple University’s Scholastic Honors Program and holds a bachelor’s degree in Accounting.

Ricardo Michel

Treasurer

Ben Affleck

Co-Founder and Chair

In addition to a successful career as a two-time Academy Award winning actor, writer and director, Ben Affleck is also a passionate advocate and philanthropist. In 2010, Ben co-founded Eastern Congo…

Maura O’Neill

Through her work in the public, private and academic sectors, Maura O’Neill has created entrepreneurial and public-private solutions for some of the toughest domestic and global problems. A serial entrepreneur, Maura…

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele

Secretary

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is a writer, foreign policy analyst, and independent journalist. He is a senior strategy and advocacy adviser at Eastern Congo Initiative. Mr. Dizolele is a professorial lecturer in…

Nima Taghavi

Nima Taghavi is the Founder & CEO of Group 206, a private investment firm created in 2013. Taghavi’s entrepreneurial journey began at a young age. Taghavi immigrated to the US from…

Whitney Williams

Co-Founder and Vice Chair

Ricardo Michel

Treasurer

Ricardo Michel is an international development expert with more than 25 years of international finance and leadership experience in both the private and public sectors. He is the Founder and CEO…