Our Team

Helen Rowley is a British woman, with a wonderful husband called Steve. They have four grown up children; Joe, Theo, Jake and Harriet.
She was born in Liverpool (and they are still the football team she supports!). For the last 20 plus years Helen and Steve have lived in Stoke on Trent, a city in the middle of the UK which is famous for its pottery. Although she originally studied history at University, she subsequently trained as a social worker and manager and spent 30 years in public sector work, specialising in working with and for children in the UK.
She retired in 2009 and continued to work for her community in a voluntary capacity. In 2017, Helen and Steve came to Malawi to work at the Beehive in Blantyre. They spent two years in Malawi and returned to the UK in 2019.
Helen believes very strongly in the value of public service and in the importance of giving every child the opportunity to grow into a happy, confident and valued adult.

Maria is the Founder of IAConsult-Africa, an Executive Coach and Transformative Impact Strategist dubbed by her clients as "The Solution Specialist" with the unique ability to blend key aspects of People, Process, Markets and Trends to build practical bespoke solutions to accelerate growth and impact.
Maria has expertise in reinventing business through bespoke strategic
solutions that both grow revenue/ impact and create positive legacy.
Her background is in the global banking and international logistics
sectors where she spent the majority of her 16-year corporate career in
People development across Africa. In particular, leading Training and
Organizational Development focused mainly on Leadership
Transformation.
She describes that phase of her life as the “scaffold” that led to her
progression into executive coaching and consulting 4 years ago.
To date, Maria has coached and trained a legion of forward thinkers to
transform their organizations and create the mechanisms required to
balance ambition and conscientious lifestyles. She has also developed a
niche designing accelerators and incubators that provide holistic
practical support to early-stage businesses and social enterprises that
prepare both the organizations and their leaders for growth and
investment.
As Maria continues to re-imagine business and the business of doing
good with today and tomorrow’s leaders, her work is driven by the
passion to redefine leadership and talent for Africa.

Joseph Mkandawire is a health advocate, an educator and a visionary. Currently working as a medical doctor and surgeon in training with the Pan-African Academy for Christian Surgeons at Malamulo Hospital. He provides preventive and curative services through the surgical department. Through his work, he forms part of a core team of doctors that serve a population of 5 million, from 5 local districts hospitals that use Malamulo as their referral facility for much needed surgical care. He is a true change maker having worked with communities for impact for over 8 years now. In his spare time, he has volunteered as an educator, tutor, mentor, and community mobilizer. He is also the co-founder of Fount for Nations and served as Programs Director for 4 years. In that capacity, he provided strategic programmatic direction. With his MBA and background in research and epidemiology he supported the development of core structures within the organization specifically in monitoring and evaluation.
Joseph believes in improving health and education systems as a way of increasing impact. His next steps are deepening his understanding of global health and management of resources in healthcare and education in order to better tackle determinants of health, such as education, social and community contexts.