Our Team

Professor Saul Tendler is the Chair of the Ashinaga UK Board of Trustees, having first joined the Board in October 2022. Professor Tendler was the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost of the University of York from 2015-2023. He gained a BSc in Pharmacy at the University of Manchester and a PhD from the University of Aston. He was a Medical Research Council Training Fellow at the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, before being appointed to a Lectureship at the University of Nottingham. He was subsequently promoted to Professor of Biophysical Chemistry and then headed Nottingham’s School of Pharmacy, before being appointed a Pro-Vice-Chancellor. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and was designated a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.

Professor ‘Funmi Olonisakin joined the Ashinaga UK Board of Trustees in August 2020. Professor ‘Funmi is Vice-President and Vice-Principal International and Professor of Security, Leadership and Development at King’s College London, where she founded the African Leadership Centre. She was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, as one of seven members of the Advisory Group of Experts (AGE) on the Review of the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture. Professor ‘Funmi also serves on the board of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and chairs the Africa Regional Advisory Committee of the Open Society Foundation.

Suzan Nimrod Kilamile joined the Ashinaga Board of Trustees UK in July 2021. Suzan studied Medical Physiology and Therapeutics at the University of Nottingham and is among the first Ashinaga Africa Initiative (AAI) Graduates to complete their degree. Suzan is passionate about healthcare in children and maternal health. As a new and inspired academician, Suzan is hoping to have an impact through scientific and clinical research to promote healthcare. As a board member Suzan acts as a voice of Ashinaga Scholars and alumni.

Noriko Carpentier-Tominaga joined the Board of Directors of Ashinaga Association in the UK in February 2017. Noriko is also a board member of the Ashinaga Foundation. Based in Paris, Noriko works to strengthen French-Japanese economic relationships as Deleguee Generale of the Comite d’Echanges Franco-Japonais. Working with companies seeking broader and deeper connections, Noriko cares about the interests of each of them and tries to offer a variety of activities to facilitate them developing their business. Noriko’s current focus for Ashinaga is to support the development of professional opportunities for alumni to enable them to contribute to African development.

Yoshiomi Tamai joined the Board of Directors of Ashinaga Association in the UK in February 2017. Yoshiomi Tamai is the founder and president of the Ashinaga Foundation. After losing his mother in a traffic accident over fifty years ago, he became passionate about working to support the educational and emotional needs of orphans who lost their parents in traffic accidents. He founded an organisation, Ashinaga, that gave scholarships to these orphans before extending the support to all children who have lost one or both parents. Tamai’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Global Fundraising award and, most recently, the Goto Shinpei award.

Yukie Seki has been on the Board of Ashinaga Association in the UK since February 2017. Yukie is also a member of the board of the Ashinaga Foundation, where she has responsibility for international activities. Yukie works as the director of Ashinaga Africa Initiative. Before joining Ashinaga, Yukie worked at Hewlett Packard as the Business Manager and Corporate Director.

Kimeshan Naidoo is a South African computer scientist and technology entrepreneur. He is the CTO at BX and Co-Founder of Unibuddy. Naidoo graduated from the University of Cape Town with a BSc Electrical Engineering degree. He moved to the United Kingdom in 2015 and graduated with an MSc Computer Science from University College London. He was featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 Europe list in 2020.

Pablo Pérez Abella has nearly 30 years’ experience as an investment banker, having worked with Nomura, Merril Lynch, Daiwa and SMBC. He is Managing Director at Karson Management Bermuda Ltd, a fintech company, and is a board member of Lutob Investment Ltd. Pablo also served as Business Development Director and an Advisory Board member for a Formula 1 website, advising on structuring a successful exit and sale to Bernie Ecclestone and Formula One Management.

Nashina Asaria, born in Kenya, was Chief Product & Marketing Officer for Nanthealth. Nashina received financial support to study her BSc at the London School of Economics and has maintained business and personal ties with the African continent throughout her career. Prior to Nanthealth, she was CPMO of UpHealth Inc and was Chief Product Officer at Cloudbreak Health LLC. Nashina has extensive leadership, Board, and Advisory experience, having held roles at Nantworks, Verifone, Qualcomm, as well as at South Africa-based LifeQ.

Jordan McFarlane is Managing Director of Ashinaga UK. He has 9 years of experience in the charity sector, working in the UK and Canada. Joining Ashinaga UK in 2019, Jordan has led several projects including the development of leadership programming to facilitate Scholars’ social impact proposals, recruitment into UK universities, and the transformation of operations to achieve the charity’s mission effectively.