Meet the Founder, Robin Strickler
I started as a middle school music teacher, got an MA in linguistics, spent time in personnel management and taught English in a Japanese university for eight years: just the right resume for founding a high school in Rwanda! People often ask me “How did you decide to come to Rwanda and start a school?” The simple answer is that I married my husband John, a Rwandan Lutheran pastor who was born in exile in Tanzania. He was offered a slim reed of opportunity to get a secondary education, which made an enormous difference in his life. What he has done with that education is impressive. That and my own two very different experiences in two high schools convinced me that quality education is very much a “game-changer”. Rwanda is in the midst of a very serious change: from grinding poverty, war and genocide to a successful and purposeful nation: we are one aspect of that change.
Meet the Founding President, Karl Smith
While I was getting my bachelors and masters degrees at UCLA, I taught mathematics at Culver City Junior High School, and upon graduation I accepted a position as a national teaching fellow at Whitworth College. My dream at the time was to teach mathematics at Santa Rosa Junior College, and I achieved that goal when I accepted a position in 1968. During the next 35 years, I taught mathematics, served as department chairperson, and was active in mathematics education in the United States. I was an officer of the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges, serving at president 1987-1989. During those years, I wrote over 50 college-level mathematics textbooks with the goal of making mathematics accessible to all. Soon after retiring, I was invited to accompany Bishop Mullen to Rwanda less than 20 years after the 1994 genocide. I fell in love with the children and learned that the most pressing need was for secondary education. At that moment, my life changed from college professor to advocate for the children of Rwanda. I returned to the U.S. with a mission to build a school. Shortly after my first visit to Rwanda, Robin arrived to start a school. God brought us together and we joined forces to start the Rwanda School Project bringing secondary education to all qualified students, giving emphasis to educating girls and orphans. The result was to open a secondary school in 2010, Rwamagana Leaders’ School in Rwanda.
