Stopping Ebola Podcast Hosts
Stopping Ebola: Inside the Crisis
Ruth Mukwana is the Helen Hamlyn Senior Fellow and Director of Graduate Studies of the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs.
(IIHA) at Fordham University. Most recently, she was an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and Fiction Co-Editor for Solstice magazine.
For over twenty years, she worked with the United Nations including senior positions, Chief of Section, Asia & Pacific, Latin America and Caribbean with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Chief of Duty of Care, Wellbeing and Capacity Development in the Executive Office in New York, and Deputy Head of Office for Sudan. She has worked with UNHCR, UNSCO and UNMISS in Sri Lanka, South Sudan, oPt, Tanzania and Switzerland. Her experience includes training, protection, internal displacement, voluntary repatriation, advocacy, access, and refugee status determination.
Ruth is also a fiction writer and a 2020 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil NYC Emerging Fellow. Her work has appeared in several magazines including Bomb, Solstice, Consequence and the Black Warriors Review and she is currently working on a novel. She is the Creator and Host of the Stories and Humanitarian Action Podcast.
Ruth is a Ugandan national with a Law degree from Makerere University, a Masters in international and comparative Law from the Free University of Brussels and a Masters in Fine Arts from Bennington College.
She lives in New York with her daughter.
Mr. Harneis has more than 30 years of experience in development coordination, humanitarian assistance and management. Prior to his appointment, he served as United Nations Resident Coordinator in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Before that, he was Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and earlier on he served as Head of Office for the Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Nigeria, UNICEF Representative in Yemen and in Guinea, as well as humanitarian positions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon and Indonesia. Before joining the United Nations, Mr. Harneis worked in the private sector.
Mr. Julien Harneis has a Master of Studies in International Relations from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and a Master of Business Administration from the Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires (INSEAD) in France.
Kris Venezia, Producer
Kris Venezia is a native of Phoenix, Arizona, now living in Brooklyn, New York. He attended college at Fordham University at the Rose Hill campus from 2011 - 2015.
Kris works as a financial advisor for a boutique firm, Eckman Wealth Management. He manages clients’ portfolios, crafts strategic plans, and assists in meeting desired financial goals.
Before working as an advisor, Kris spent several years in radio. He wore a variety of hats while working at WNYC, iHeartMedia, CBS Sports Radio, and ABC News Radio. The audio bug has stayed with Kris, and when not presenting cash flow charts to clients, he produces the Humanitarian Fault Lines podcast from Fordham University’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs.
In his spare time, Kris enjoys watching sports, golfing, and bar trivia. Since he’s from Phoenix, he roots for the Arizona professional teams, but at the college level, he’s a supporter of the Fordham Rams. The highlight of his bar trivia career (so far) is finishing second to Jeopardy! superstar Mattea Roach at Commonwealth trivia in Park Slope.
Contact: [email protected]
Brendan Cahill, Executive Producer
Brendan Cahill is the Executive Director of the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) at Fordham University and leads its outreach, academic
programs, research, and publications. For over twenty-three years he has created, directed and taught in humanitarian
programs throughout the world, including South Africa, Jordan, Kenya, India, Egypt, Myanmar, Kuala Lumpur, South Korea, Nepal, Sudan, Colombia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Spain, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, England and the United States. He established one of the first Masters programs in Humanitarian Action in the world, and, to date, has trained nearly 4,000 aid professionals from over 140 countries. He designed and implemented a full undergraduate Humanitarian Studies program at Fordham University. He created a new Master of Science in Humanitarian Studies program in New York, an online Master of Arts in International Humanitarian Action
and an undergraduate Minor in Community and Global Public Health.
The Institute, which he helped create, acts as a bridge between the University and humanitarian practice, and hosts lectures and symposia on a regular basis. Due to the work of the Institute, Fordham University is the US partner for NOHA, a consortium of 12 European universities offering humanitarian education. Mr. Cahill has also served on the editorial board of their academic journal. Mr. Cahill is the Publisher of The Refuge Press, an imprint of Fordham University Press. He is currently co-authoring a textbook in Humanitarian Studies, to be published by University of Toronto Press. He is the Executive Producer of Humanitarian Fault Lines, the Institute’s first podcast. His research includes the intersection of Design and the Humanitarian Sector, and Food Insecurity and Conflict. He received his BA from Colby College and his IDHA and MBA from Fordham University.
Besides his work for the IIHA, he is the President of the CIHC, an independent humanitarian NGO. He is a Trustee of The Helen Hamlyn Trust in London, a Director of the KMC Foundation in New York, a member of the Advisory Board of The Humanitarian Centre of University College Dublin. He is the President of the Point Lookout Historical Society and the Secretary of the Point Lookout Civic Association.
He is married with four children and lives in Point Lookout, New York.