Natopiwo Partners
Board of Directors

Lori Stanley is a Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa where she taught cultural and linguistic anthropology for four decades. While leading Luther study abroad programs in northern Tanzania from 2002 until 2023, she worked closely with Musa Kamaika Meng’arana and other Natopiwo team members. At the request of a Maasai colleague, she and her students collaborated with Musa and others on research about Maasai medicinal plants, producing a text for use in the Indigenous Knowledge course taught at a rural secondary school serving mostly Maasai students. Lori lives in Decorah with her husband David, where she enjoys hiking, cycling, gardening, bird watching, cooking, writing, and playing with her Goldendoodles, Angel and Patience.​

 Lori Stanley on Linkedin

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Jon Jensen is Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies and Director of the Center for Sustainable Communities at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He has taken students to Tanzania on several occasions over the last 10 years, including leading a semester program in 2016 through the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. He has worked with Musa on study abroad programs in Tanzania since 2015 and has sponsored Musa’s visits to the US. Jon lives with his wife, Rachel, on a small farm along the Upper Iowa River in the Driftless Area and enjoys canoeing, biking, and tending his gardens and orchard.

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Dr. Laura Wangsness Willemsen is an Associate Professor in the Doctoral Studies Department at Concordia University, Saint Paul, Minnesota. She mentors doctoral students, teaches research methods and ethics, and leads research on educational equity. Her work appears in outlets like Comparative Education Review and Education Week, bridging academic scholarship with public discourse. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative and International Development Education from the University of Minnesota and serves on several NGO boards to advance education in Tanzania. With 30 years of experience in Tanzanian education, she has taught English in Monduli, led research for the University of Minnesota, and consulted on educational projects for USAID and Lutheran World Federation.

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Laura Wangsness Willemsen on Linkedin

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Dr. Cynthiann Heckelsmilller, MSc Enthnobotany, PhD Anthropology, has worked with Musa and the Maasai community of Monduli Juu since 2015. Her research has been focused on how people develop and adapt cultural knowledge systems concerning plants as food in the face of changing environmental conditions for the pastoral Maasai people in NE Tanzania. Her work used cross-cultural data to test evolutionary theories about why people seek out and/or become experts in ethnoscientific domains. As a Research Associate with the HRAF Advanced Research Centers at Yale University, Cynthiann investigated how societies respond to different types of environmental shocks so that we can better understand the cultural dimensions of ecological resilience. She curently lives in northern Virginia with her husband and daughter.

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Cynthiann Heckelsmiller on Linkedin

Dr. Rachel Hodapp is a medical anthropologist, social scientist, licensed advanced practice social worker, and higher education instructor whose work centers on reproductive well-being, feminist ethnography, and decolonial praxis in East Africa and the United States. Rachel is committed to community-based participatory action research and to redistributive politics that supports people who have been marginalized by structures of power. Rachel has been working with Musa Kamaika Meng’arana on various ethnomedical research and development projects since 2011 and is also a co-founder of Natopiwo in Tanzania.  Her doctoral work focused on menstrual care among Maasai of Tanzania. Currently, Rachel is a research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the School of Medicine and Public Health Collaborative for Reproductive Equity working on public health-based reproductive justice projects. Rachel lives in Duluth, Minnesota, and loves camping, cycling, running, and spending time in the woods and near the Great Lake with her partner Joe and their pup, Sage.

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Rachel Hodapp on Linkedin

Jon is the most recent addition to the Natopiwo Partners Board of Directors, having joined the board in August 2025. He is an administrator emeritus at Luther College after serving the institution for 30 years in a variety of administrative roles. For nearly 20 years, Jon led Luther’s international admissions efforts, helping thousands of students from around the world both enroll at and obtain the scholarship support necessary to obtain a Luther degree. He also managed all of Luther’s international and domestic off-campus programs, helping thousands of Luther students and faculty encounter a much larger world through international study. Over the years, Jon has traveled extensively to 106 different countries; he has visited Tanzania (and Musa) four times. Jon lives in Decorah and enjoys volunteering at a number of local and global nonprofits, and continues to travel extensively.

Shannon Heckelsmiller is a retired educator with 30 years of classroom teaching experience, primarily in middle school science, and a decade as a district-level Science Coordinator for the Kent and Tahoma School Districts in Washington State. Throughout her career, she has been dedicated to fostering inclusive learning environments that nurture students’ curiosity, critical thinking, and a lifelong love of learning. Shannon lives in the Seattle area with her family and she hopes to travel to Tanzania in 2027!