Our team

Beyond The Orphanage Foundation is an Australian Not for Profit development organisation which was set up to provide educational, vocational, social and emotional support to orphaned, destitute or disadvantaged children and young people in Ethiopia. The primary development project has been the establishment of a local not for profit agency known as BTOO to deliver a range of best practice support programs to the children and young people.

BTOO Ethiopia has an independent management board made up of four local professionals who are deeply committed to the project and the BTOO Project Manager. The Board, in consultation with the BTOF Board, decides on the organisational objectives, future strategy and the planning to implement the BTOF mission locally.

Geoff Hucker

Founder and Executive Director, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation

Geoff with his work as an Airline captain has been fortunate to visit many parts of the world; he was deeply touched by the plight of the Africa orphans especially in Ethiopia

For the last six years he has run many projects for the orphans of Ethiopia from building a library, computer centre, play grounds and renovating the Kidane Mehret orphanage. Throughout his time in Ethiopia the older orphans were always his main concern, for he felt they required the most help and are the most vulnerable, while there is support for the younger orphans the older kids tend to suffer, he personally supported as many of the older orphans as he could, "the kids have so much potential just given love, support and guidance". Beyond the orphanage was formed to support older orphans in a more formalized manner.

Tim Handfield

Director, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation

Tim Handfield became one of the founding directors of Beyond the Orphanage following a visit to the Kidane Mehret Orphanage in Addis Ababa in 2007. While spending two weeks at the orphanage to take photographs for the orphanage website, Tim gained an awareness of the urgent need for support for older orphans facing the transition from the orphanage to independent living. When Geoff Hucker formed Beyond the Orphanage Foundation to meet that need, Tim was keen to become involved.

Tim’s career combines his passions for art and photography, with business and technology. An art photographer for more than thirty years, Tim has also established and managed a number of successful businesses including: a professional photo processing laboratory, a leading supplier of technology solutions for design, photograph and video editing, and a web based system for marketing and delivering stock photography. Tim’s current work includes personal photographic art projects, and providing digital photography consulting services to leading cultural institutions.

Peter Banki

Director, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation

Peter is a partner of Banki Haddock Fiora, a firm specialising in intellectual property, IT, entertainment and media law. He is an experienced lawyer and advisor negotiating contracts and representing clients in disputes in copyright and related areas in Courts and Tribunals.

Peter is chairman of the Australian Copyright Council and a member of the Intellectual Property Committee of the Law Council of Australia. He has been a member of several government advisory committees on copyright and communications law and is a former chairman of the Copyright Law Review Committee and member of the board of Copyright Agency Limited.

Claire Brace

Director and HR & Administration Manager, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation

Since Claire joined BTO, she has helped to develop our policies, processes and procedures to enable us to run more efficiently. She has visited Addis to help set up the office and worked closely with our Ethiopian staff to share some of her experience.   As well as her BTO committments, she works full time as a senior HR manager for Accenture - an IT consulting company. She has a Chemistry degree from Oxford University, an HR Post Graduate diploma and an MBA majoring in HR.  

Susan Pitman

(MA Anthropology) Director, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation

27 years as a social researcher in the child welfare field with an emphasis on practice research, program development and quality assurance/improvement and including a period as manager of OzChild's Interantional Aid program.

Sharon Hendry

Editor, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation

Sharon Hendry, from London, UK, is The Sun newspaper's Senior Feature Writer responsible for general features and investigations across the paper.  Sharon has worked and travelled extensively in Ethiopia and first established links with Kidane Mehret Children's Home in 2005.  Sharon has written many articles for BTO and greatly supports the Kidane Mehret Children's home and is a significant supporter of BTO also in many ways.

Jenny Munro

Consultant, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation

After visiting Addis Ababa for the first time in April 2007, Jenny fell in love with the children and staff of Kidane Mehret Children’s Home. The many subsequent visits were focused on enhancing the surroundings and happiness of everyone there. The objectives were simple - bringing a smile to the faces of the children playing in the playground; expanding their horizons through books and learning; or to brighten up the surroundings for the ladies working with such love and dedication in the babies rooms.   Jenny shared Geoff’s vision of giving older children the means by which to achieve their dreams – or even have dreams at all! Beyond The Orphanage was born. “With this amazing mix of talent and support, BTO is able to make a profound and direct difference to the lives of these beautiful, courageous children, each one unique and now being guided and assisted through these critical stages of creating their best lives. They truly are an inspiration and can count on my love and support for the long term.”   Jenny is originally from Scotland, now living and working in aviation in Dubai.  

Stuart Szabo

Consultant, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation

“Stuart has 20 years consulting experience, including management consulting, line management, program & project management.   He has an MBA from Melbourne Business School.   For the past seven years he has been working as an airline pilot”.

Roger Hall

IT Manager, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation in Ethiopia

Roger spent many years working in Ethiopia and has helped in many ways including bringing hundreds of pairs of shoes for the children. He works closely with the Ethiopian staff to provide effective online IT support for Ethiopia and the whole BTO group.

Roger is also an Airline Captain and heard of BTO's work through Geoff. He has visited Addis many times and has helped in a variety of ways including providing hundreds of pairs of shoes for the children in the Kidane Mehret Children's Home. More recently he has helped using his IT and technical skills including the technical set up of the BTO office with the help of his son.

Dr Donna Helm-Yost

PHD Child Psychologist, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation

Donna is a licensed psychologist, a certified school psychologist, and a registered yoga teacher. She currently works in a high school setting integrating her training as a psychologist with her skills as a yoga teacher to help students to understand and cope with academic and social/emotional challenges.   In 2007, she learned of Geoff’s work with orphaned teenagers in Ethiopia. Donna found Geoff’s passion for his work in Ethiopia inspiring and she just had to help. In July/August 2008, she visited Addis Ababa to do volunteer work with a medical team from Arizona. It was love at first sight! Donna realized at this point that she needed to do more to help these amazing kids.   With significant support from her friends and colleagues at Arizona State University, she is currently using her interests and training to design and implement a research study to determine the long-term effectiveness of BTO in the lives of our teens. It is her hope that BTO can be a model program to eventually help orphaned teens across the planet.

Beth Hoskins

Financial Controller, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation

Beth is an Associate Director of a large Australian accounting firm and has been involved with BTO from the start. She has been responsible for the financial management of BTO Australia and BTO Ethiopia and has trained the local Ethiopian staff in financial matters.

Dr Natalie Conner

PHD Child Welfare Advisor, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation

Natalie Conner lives in Charlotte, NC, USA with a family of three children, the youngest of whom, Mentamer, was born in Ethiopia. Natalie has worked in the field of social work for 20 years, and focuses her clinical work and research on adolescent development from a strengths-perspective. She received her Masters degrees from the University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in social work, policy, and intervention research. She came to BTO via the internet, after searching for a way to connect with Ethiopia after returning home from a two week stay in Ethiopia, in August, 2008. During that time, she was repeatedly made aware of the many talents, strengths, and uniquely beautiful qualities displayed by the Ethiopian children and adults she met.

Natalie has great hopes for developing a lifelong relationship with Ethiopia and the people who have touched her heart so deeply.

Lorraine Marsh

Online Communications Consultant, Beyond the Orphanage Foundation

Lorraine assists Beyond the Orphanage with its online communications. She is also responsible for developing software to support our objectives.

David Rust-Smith

Game Development and Marketing

David grew up in Nepal, Malawi, and Canada, and developed a passion for blending technology with social benefit.

David is currently developing an xbox game and associated marketing campaign to help Beyond the Orphanage spread awareness of their cause internationally among youth, and to raise funds to help Beyond the Orphanage grow.

David also runs an online marketing firm, SMEWebsites, that helps BTO with website and social media strategy.

Mr Markos Yohannes

BTOO Director - LLB, Law (Degree) Philosophy (Diploma), Globel Studies and International Relation (Degree)

Markos has been the director for BTOO since early 2010 and had been advising BTOO since 2009. Markos comes with a wealth of NGO experience and is personally very committed to work towards ensure the children of BTO have a bright future.

Mr Fita Tulu

BTOO Coordinator - Integrated Human Development, Peace and Justice (Diploma), Human Resource Management (Diploma)

Ms Misrak Mekonnen

BTO Financial Manager - Accounting (Diploma)

Sr Martha Rafito

Medical Adviser for BTO - BSc, Nursing (Diploma)

Ms Tringo Fanta

Educational Department Coordinator - Physiology and Sociology (Degree)

Tringo is the Educational Department Coordinator for the BTOO. She is also on the Board of the BTO and works with Good Works Counselling and Social Service.

Mrs Medhanit Albejo

Administrator for BTOO - LLB, Business Administration (Diploma)

Medhanit is the Administrator for BTOO. Like Tringo she is also on the Board for the BTO and works with Good Works Counselling and Social Service.