Founder and President — James E. Jennings, PhD

For much of the last two decades, based on a belief that acting on conscience is central to our humanity, Dr. Jennings has responded to disasters and worked to improve health care delivery in some of the neediest and most hazardous places on earth.  He organized and led delivery of medical aid following wars and earthquakes in many places, beginning with the siege of Beirut in 1982, including wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, and Gaza, as well as earthquakes in Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, India, Haiti, and Peru.  After the giant tsunami in the Indian Ocean, he helped staff medical clinics at Sigli and Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and built homes in Bansak, Thailand.  

In Iraq, before, during, and after the US-led war, Dr. Jennings led medical and public health teams that trained hundreds of physicians and nurses in child survival methods at hospitals and clinics in Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul.  He has organized and led refugee and disaster assistance, medical aid, and health training programs in many other countries, including India, Jordan, Lebanon, Peru, Haiti, Turkey, Sudan, Iran, Syria, Ethiopia, and Pakistan.  He has also organized and led US Academics for Peace conferences in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Sudan.  

US Academics for Peace, a division of Conscience International, engages in peacemaking efforts in regions of conflict, particularly in the Middle East.  Dr. Jennings continues to advocate greater understanding of other cultures and increased humanitarian involvement in the developing world. 

Dr. Jennings was nominated for the King Hussein Humanitarian Prize and has received awards from Russia, China, Lithuania, South Africa, Iraq and Sudan. In 2013 he received the University of Illinois Alumni Humanitarian Award.

 Angelo Velis, Vice President for Corporate Mission

Angelo Velis has responsibility for outreach, team building, and development, including helping to organize and coordinate relief projects. Before joining Conscience International in 2015, he was founder and president of an urban NGO where he spent almost two decades as an advocate for social justice, mercy, and community development and designing programs aimed at the urban poor, economically oppressed, and the migrant. Working alongside schools, non-profit agencies and private organizations, his mission has been to bring help and hope to those who need it most. At Conscience International Velis has served as Community Development Director for Guatemala, empowering millennials to lead their nation, re-enforcing partner relationships, working with the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food to retrain farmers in more efficient farming practices in order to combat malnutrition, and helping institute a woodworking program to train youth for income producing jobs. He has also served during the Syrian refugee and migrant crisis, leading Conscience International teams that have been delivering relief aid directly to refugees in Greece and Turkey since September 2015.

Richard Sarker, Vice President for Programs 

Richard Sarker has extensive experience in administering aid and development programs in the Asia-Pacific region. From 1976-1985 he served as a field officer for the UNDP / World Food Program in Bangladesh. Earlier he served for three years as senior office manager for the Ford Foundation. From 1985-1993 he served as program administrator/Director for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Bangladesh. From 2008-2010 he was the Regional Representative for Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Global Mission for Southeast Asia with responsibility for monitoring and evaluation of Health, Education and Community development programs. He was based in Chennai, India, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and extensively travelled around the region. He has extensive training in management, community development and emergency relief operation from UNDP/WFP, ELCA and World Vision. He was educated in Dhaka University (BA) in Bangladesh and an MBA from London International College, UK. Sarker speaks his native Bengali and is conversant in Hindi and Urdu. He has travelled and worked in Europe and North America. He is widely travelled around the world to more than thirty different countries including Australia, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Turkey, France, Philippines, Pakistan, Nepal, Indonesia, UAE, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Canada, Myanmar, Germany and Sweden.

Kurt Giebel, Vice President, Finance

Kurt Giebel has been with Conscience International since late 2010, initially serving as a consultant providing accounting and tax services in an advisory role. He joined the staff as Comptroller at the beginning of 2013 taking a more active leadership role in financial support of leadership as well as providing support to program directors actively working on implementing programs with Conscience International.

Giebel has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Accounting from Eastern Kentucky University. He has a wide realm of experience in both corporate and manufacturing/process accounting for a variety of large companies. He also has experience in working with smaller companies and startup organizations providing finance, accounting and tax support for companies just getting started as well as those companies working to turn operating results into profitable operations.

He has made significant contributions by introducing budgeting processes and financial reporting working with other leadership team members and program directors in working to help manage program expenses within budgeted levels as well as working to continue the effective and efficient utilization of donor contributions to accomplish the overall goals of Conscience International.

Gail Anderson, Medical Program Director

Gail Anderson, MD, MBA, has served as the chief medical officer at two major US public teaching hospitals-Grady Memorial in Atlanta and Harbor-UCLA in Los Angeles. He has served as Associate Dean of the Emory University and UCLA schools of medicine and has twice served as interim Chief Medical Officer for the Department of Health Services for the County of Los Angeles. He has degrees from Dartmouth College, the University of Southern California, and Emory University.

Dr. Anderson has been a member of the Board of Directors of the American College of Emergency Physicians and an examiner for the American Board of Emergency Medicine. Following medical school rotations in New Zealand and Australia, he developed a strong interest in international medical care. He has participated on relief teams to disasters in Mexico, Armenia, Turkey, and Pakistan, served as a hospital emergency physician in Saudi Arabia, and lectured at Alexandria University in Egypt.

A member of the Medical Advisor Committee for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, he served as Grady's spokesman regarding the care of the bombing victims in Centennial Park. During the 1990's he helped to coordinate a hospital to hospital partnership between Emory and Grady and the Republic of Georgia in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. As Medical Director for Conscience International, he has participated in medical relief projects in Turkey, Pakistan, and Nigeria.

Jeremy Holloman, Refugee Coordinator

Jeremy Holloman is a veteran of the construction industry who has led Conscience International’s reconstruction efforts in Haiti since the devastating January, 2010 earthquake, building 152 houses in Port-au-Prince and Grand Goave.  He is an innovative pioneer in developing earthquake resistant shelter solutions using recycled rubble from the earthquake.  Previously he led relief and reconstruction work in Honduras and Nicaragua in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch, as well as in El Salvador following the earthquake of 2001.  He has also worked in Chile and Guatemala.  His relief experience includes the construction of houses, civic buildings and schools as well as water, sanitation and educational projects.  He speaks Spanish and is conversant in French and Creole.