Born and raised in Kenya, Kieran's connection to the country's northern landscapes runs deep. His childhood was shaped by family safaris across northern Kenya, where he developed an intimate understanding of the region's diverse communities, rich cultures, and remarkable wildlife. This early exposure fostered a lifelong passion for the delicate balance between human livelihoods and conservation, that would later define his career.

Kieran is a trained veterinarian, and has been working in the community conservation space in northern Kenya since 2017. He is also a qualified pilot, which is invaluable when working in this remote landscape. Kieran's technical expertise spans wildlife capture and immobilization, rangeland management, community development, and carbon project development / implementation; having played a key role in the successful launch of the world's first, and largest soil based carbon project. He has worked extensively with endangered species management, supporting sanctuaries for elephants, black rhinos, Rothschild giraffes, and hirola antelope.

Kieran brings a wealth of practical first hand experience to the Manda Projects team; fluent in English and Kiswahili, he represents a new generation of conservation leaders who understand that successful environmental initiatives must be rooted in respect for local communities and their traditional knowledge and livelihoods. His work demonstrates that the most effective conservation happens at the intersection of scientific rigor, cultural sensitivity, and genuine partnership with the people who call these landscapes home.

Whitney has spent two decades working at inflection points — technology transitions, the evolution of educational institutions, and now the intersection of conservation and community development in East Africa. Her work spans strategic communications, fundraising, and donor relationship development across nonprofit and private sector contexts, and includes senior roles spanning startups and boutique strategic communications firms.

At Archipelagus, she leads communications strategy and the cultivation of partnerships and funding relationships that advance the organization's conservation and community mission — bringing the discipline of someone who has built reputational credibility for organizations from the ground up. She brings deep fundraising experience, including board leadership roles at independent schools where she led major donor campaigns and chaired institutional search processes. She also serves as Executive Director of RadicaLab Foundation, a fellow member of the Stær Collective, a hybrid philanthropy and impact investing network addressing critical challenges facing humanity.

Whitney considers it a privilege to work alongside colleagues and partners whose knowledge of these landscapes runs generations deep. She is learning Kiswahili — slowly, and mostly on Duolingo — and treasures every visit to East Africa.

Kimani brings more than twenty-five years of financial and strategic leadership across an unusually wide range of industries — hospitality, tourism, transport, aviation, real estate, and investment management. He has led finance departments, built the teams behind them, and rebuilt the systems organisations depend on to grow: budgeting, financial reporting, taxation, internal controls, audit, and cash flow management.

It is precisely the discipline Archipelagus is built on. Durable conservation depends on institutions that can steward funding, govern themselves well, and stand on their own over the long term — and Kimani's work is to give the organisation, and the community structures it supports, financial foundations strong enough to last.

He holds an MBA in Strategic Management from the University of Nairobi and a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance and Accounting from Strathmore University, where he also qualified as a CPA(K). He is a member of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (ICPAK) and a Certified Public Secretary (CPS-K).

A member of the Daasanach community whose ancestral lands border Sibiloi National Park, Casper brings a lifetime of lived knowledge of one of Kenya's most remote and ecologically significant landscapes — an understanding of how wildlife moves across it, the cultural dynamics that shape how people and animals share it, and the trust that comes from being genuinely of a place.

He holds a Certificate in Community Wildlife Management from the Kenya Wildlife Service Training Institute and a Diploma in Wildlife Management from the Wildlife Research and Training Institute in Naivasha. Through field attachments with Kenya Wildlife Service, an internship with the Northern Rangelands Trust, and mapping work with Leakey Journeys and Expedition Limited, he has built hands-on experience across wildlife monitoring, ecological data collection, habitat restoration, community-based conservation, and GPS mapping.

Casper pairs rigorous field skills — wildlife monitoring, ecological data collection, GIS and GPS mapping — with community relationships that can only be built over a lifetime. In that, he embodies the conviction at the heart of how Archipelagus works: that the people who know these landscapes best are the ones who should lead their protection.