Our Team

Barry Hoffner, Founder and Executive Director of Caravan to Class

Barry Hoffner, a former investment banker in emerging markets, traveled to Timbuktu, Mali and attended the Festival au Desert in January, 2010. While there, he had a chance encounter with a village of Tuareg and returned home to California with the idea of rebuilding the village’s educational infrastructure. By the end of 2010, he had organized Caravan to Class as a 501c3, partnered with a local non-governmental organization (NGO) to administer the project, raised funds, and started construction on Caravan to Class’ first school in the village of Tedeini.

Hamadou Toure, President of Nord et Development

Hamadou Toure is an engineer of applied sciences with a specialization in rural agriculture. Hamadou spent twenty years working for large western-affiliated NGOs before starting Nord et Developpment (Nor Dev) in 2009. Nor Dev is currently working with a number of Western NGOs providing technical assistance, including the African Development Bank.

Aekta Desai, Associate Caravan to Class

Aekta Desai has a B.A. in Economics from the University of Virginia and is a candidate for her Master's in International Development and French at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. She is currently a research assistant for the U.S. Partnership for Peace Training and Education Center. Prior to that, Aekta was an intern at Millennium Partners Consulting, where she worked primarily for USAID programs on good governance and economic reform.

Aekta was raised in Kenya, and speaks English, Swahili, Hindi, Gujarati, and French. Aekta's focus at Caravan to Class is on Social Media and School/Organization Outreach.

Michelle White-Saoud, Associate Caravan to Class

Michelle White-Saoud is a writer and editor who delights in discovering just how big and how small the world can be. Hearing the music of Vieux Farka Toure on KCRW led her to attend Festival au Desert in Timbuktu, Mali in 2010. She has worked for travel publications, local government and information technology, including four years in proposal writing and management for biometric identification solutions with 3M Cogent.

Michelle holds a B.A. in English from UCLA and serves as Communications Associate for Caravan to Class.