Riders for Health is made up of over 600 staff across our programmes. We often describe ourselves as a family because of the great feeling of support and collaboration within and between our teams.
Run entirely by nationals, including many former health workers, one of our greatest assets is our shared knowledge and understanding of the countries in which we work.
We are proud to employ local people at all levels, offering high quality roles in communities where reliable employment is often hard to come by.
Management council
Directing our organisation, the management council is made up of leaders with a wealth of experience in transport and healthcare.
Kayode Ajayi
CEO Riders for Health & Country Director, Nigeria
Kayode Ajayi (AJ) joined the organisation in 1999 as the technical development manager in Nigeria. He studied marine engineering at the Maritime Academy of Nigeria, with an internship at the Nigerian National Shipping line, completing his course at the Southampton Institute, England.
Mahali Hlasa
Chairman, Riders for Health & Country Director, Lesotho
Mahali trained to ride a motorcycle in the Riders’ first nationwide motorcycle fleet programme in Lesotho in 1991 when she was a health worker rising to become Chief Public Health Inspector for the capital, Maseru. Her success as a rider saw her become Riders’ first female trainer. She now runs the entire Riders programme in Lesotho.
Cherno Jallow
Programme Director, The Gambia
Cherno (Che) began his career as a health worker health worker rising to become the Chief Planning Officer for the Ministry of Health. He has seen the radical transformation of health services in The Gambia and is proud of the difference Riders has made to health care in his nation.
Lucy Chiyenda
Country Director, Malawi
Lucy is a programme management professional with over 15 years of international non-governmental organisation experience in the areas of education, health and nutrition, sanitation, WASH and livelihoods. Her expertise also covers donor funds contracts and grants.
Therese Drammeh
Country Director, The Gambia
Therese, or Aunty T as she is affectionately known by everybody, joined us in 2001 after a celebrated career in the Gambian civil service, in which she rose to become Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Health.
International support
Simon Devine
Research, development and digital Lead Bringing 20+ years of humanitarian and development experience, based in the UK but travelling between our programmes, Simon develops and implements improvements and innovations to our systems.
International support is funded by our charity partner Two Wheels for Life.
The founders
Andrea and Barry Coleman in Lesotho
Riders for Health was founded in 1996 by British couple Andrea and Barry Coleman along with American motorcycle racer Randy Mamola. Their aim was to find ways of getting healthcare consistently and cost-effectively to remote communities in Africa making sure nobody died because of lack of transport.
Working with local people, they developed a vehicle management system that ensured vehicles were safe and reliable and was able to deliver zero-breakdown transport for health workers.
Randy Mamola
In 2016 Riders transferred to entirely African leadership. The founders remain involved. Andrea is the CEO of Two Wheels for Life, a partner organisation to Riders, raising funds in the world of motorcycle racing and offering other services such as grant writing, PR & media to support Riders’ work. Barry is on the board of both Riders and Two Wheels for Life and continues to provide guidance. Randy continues to work as an ambassador for both organisations.
Governance
Chairman – Brendan Donohoe.
President – Andrea Coleman.
Vice president – Barry Coleman.
Board members – Mahali Hlasa, Kayode Ajayi and Billy Becker.
Get in touch
Contact any of our country programmes, or get in touch with our international team about working together, press and media, funding and more.
