The land of a thousand hills
Rwanda
Not a posting — a place that changed her. Where a three-month plan became a decade, and a pandemic apprenticeship became a movement.
Amy's relationship with Rwanda began when a colleague at NDI asked if she'd consider serving as Country Director there. She received the offer 24 hours after the conversation and accepted. She arrived in January 2011. It was her first time on the continent.
What she found changed her. She immersed herself in Rwanda's democratic institutions, its women leaders, its extraordinary commitment to rebuilding after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. One of the first people she met was Elizabeth Dearborn Hughes, founder of the Akilah Institute for Women — a women's college in Kigali. Amy joined Akilah's board in 2018.
In 2015, she returned and rented a house she thought she'd stay in for three months — and stayed far longer than she ever planned.
Democracy isn't a product to be exported. It's a process to be cultivated.
What Amy brings to Rwanda is not a script — it's a framework. Her approach is relentlessly practical and deeply relational, built on the conviction that trust is the only currency that matters. The work is done by the people who have to live inside it.
A Decade-Plus in Rwanda
The Journey
First Arrival
A colleague at NDI asked if she'd consider serving as Country Director. She received the offer 24 hours after the conversation and accepted. She arrived in January — her first time on the African continent.
The Return
She came back and rented a house she thought she'd stay in for three months — and stayed far longer than she ever planned.
Akilah Institute
Joined the board of the Akilah Institute for Women, a women's college in Kigali founded by Elizabeth Dearborn Hughes — one of the first people she met in Rwanda.
The Apprenticeship
When the pandemic shut down Rwanda, a graduating class of women couldn't complete their mandatory internships. Amy offered her space and used Global GAIN to create an apprenticeship program in communications and storytelling. Twenty women enrolled. What was supposed to be 90 days turned into a year.
Intwari Women & CoKiyovu
From that pandemic program grew Intwari Women, a local Rwandan NGO now in its third cohort. Around it rises CoKiyovu — a Women's Leadership & Democracy Center being built in Kigali, the culmination of everything Amy has been building toward.
Rooted in Kigali
The GAINiverse
in Rwanda
Women GAIN
Rwandan counterpart to Global GAIN — advancing women's political participation and gender equality across East Africa.
CoKiyovu
Women's Leadership & Democracy Center — a compound in Kigali being built as a global political leadership institute for women and democracy advocates.
Global GAIN
The 501(c)3 connecting democracy and gender equality activists across the globe, housing Democracy University and the Rwanda apprenticeship program.
The democracy she is fighting for is not a distant ideal.
It is something she is constructing, piece by piece — in village meeting rooms and training curricula, in apprenticeship cohorts and building permits in Kigali. CoKiyovu is the culmination of everything Amy has been building toward: a global political leadership institute for women and democracy advocates, rooted in Rwanda and open to the world.