Kansas City, Missouri native Sandra Lynette Ross is founder director of Education and Health Development Trust (2003), and its sister NGO, Girl-Child International (2005) of Ghana. She specializes in international development and management: communications and education for individuals, and corporate, media and nonprofit organizations. This also includes work as staff security warden in Africa. She has worked with the US Embassy (Cameroon, Gabon and Ghana), USAID and Department of Homeland Security (formerly Immigration and Naturalization Service) and International Center for Education and Self Help as a specialist in advocacy, communications, education, health and immigration/refugee resettlement projects. Working with African communities as a journalist, international development professional and volunteer inspired Sandra to focus her NGO work in the Motherland.

Sandra currently works as a teacher for the Kansas City Public Schools where she teaches math at Success Academy by Anderson. Previously she was an exceptional education paraprofessional at Paseo Academy for Fine and Performing Arts and an adult education and literacy instructor for GED/HiSET preparation at KCPS. Sandra also works as an international development and capacity building specialist for ACDI/VOCA's USAID Farmer to Farmer project in Liberia and Ghana, in West Africa.

She formerly worked as international partnership adviser for the Education Strategy Center, Ministry of Education, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Additionally Sandra currently provides technical assistance as a consultant and volunteer to the Conference of Principals of Colleges of Education, Ghana; Association of Education and Training Services for Persons with Disabilities, Hawassa, Ethiopia; H.O.M.E. (Helping Orphans Meet Education), Doldol, Kenya; and Genesis Inc., NGO of Liberians in Des Moines, Iowa.

From 2012-2013, she was a volunteer and education and reading specialist at Hawassa College of Education in Southern Region, Ethiopia, for the USAID IFESH American Educators for Africa. She also was an education analyst at Aksum University, Axum, Ethiopia, as an USAID IFESH volunteer teacher.

As assistant director of the Virgin Islands University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, University of the Virgin Islands, Sandra managed its federal assistive technology and financial loan program for the Territory; and was also director of the Cornell University ADA Call Center and Training Services for the Virgin Islands, 2010-2012.

Sandra was a former staff resource and cultural competency coordinator for Comprehensive Mental Health Services, Inc., Independence, Missouri. As CMHS's chief learning officer, Sandra coordinated training-resource development for 250+ staff, and was responsible for cultural competency, including the nonprofit agency's diversity training and workplan, with PR, marketing and event planning responsibilities.

Sandra also served as a USAID consultant for its EngenderHealth 4-year project, Action for West Africa REgion-Reproductive Health (AWARE-RH). As AWARE-RH's dissemination specialist from 2004-2006, Sandy worked as part of its Monitoring and Evaluation unit to assist 15 ECOWAS countries along with border areas of Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, Mauritania, Príncipe and São Tomé to report best practices, institutional capacity building, public policy and health sector reform and regional advocacy activities.

She also was coordinator/senior field team leader of the Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire project, for Overseas Processing Entity/Church World Service/US Embassy Office of the Refugee Coordinator. Sandra managed two OPE worksites for processing Liberian refugee resettlement to America, including supervising a staff of 50, WHO and IOM partner staff, private security and cleaning staff along with Cote d'Ivoire military guards.

She was a former volunteer in the USAID Teachers for Africa Program of the International Foundation for Education and Self Help. She worked at Our Lady of Apostles Teacher Training College, Cape Coast, Ghana, as a media specialist and teacher trainer, creating a regional teacher's learning materials and resource center, and training for teachers at local schools in the area as well as coordinating programs and projects for student AIDS/HIV awareness clubs.

Prior to this, Sandra was a visiting lecturer and faculty advisor in charge of the Journalism Program in the Humanities Division at the University of the Virgin Islands, where she also taught journalism and business communication courses, and served as coordinator for Dr. Yegin Habtes' Summer African Academy for Educators; First Amendment Colloquia featuring Washington Post Columnist Dorothy Gilliam and Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Melvin Claxton; and Journalism Recruitment and Student Internship in the USA, US Virgin Islands and British Virgin Islands (Tortola and Virgin Gorda).

Concurrently, she also coordinated media relations for the Catholic Diocese of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, as editor of its magazine, The Catholic Islander (1999-2002); served as media manager and community outreach specialist for VI Census 2000, conducted under the auspices of the US Department of Commerce and Bureau of the Census and the UVI Eastern Caribbean Center; and worked as a senior staff writer and acting city editor at the VI Daily News.

She has completed graduate studies in journalism and mass communication, applied communication technology, media management, international marketing, and professional studies in education at Iowa State University, Ames; Cleveland State University; and the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Columbia. She is currently completing an MA.Ed. in education: teaching and instruction at Trident University. Sandra earned a Bachelor's of Science degree at Lincoln University, Jefferson City, Missouri, in the areas of journalism/news-editorial. She also holds a Ph.D. certificate in education (administration and leadership) from Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Since 1971, she has worked at news organizations in various positions, including: news editor, copy editor, reporter, photographer, entertainment and music critic, obituary writer, copy clerk, disc jockey and news director, including editor of the Southeast High School's "underground" 211 JAMMER newsletter.

A journalist with a diverse media background, since 1973, Ross has worked at print and broadcast news organizations, including the VI Carnival Magazine and VI Daily News on the island of St. Thomas; stringer and photographer for the Catholic News Service, Washington, D.C.; MU Black Studies Program African Americanist Magazine; Kansas City CALL, Times and Star, KPRS FM 103.3 and KJLU FM 89 in Missouri; The Beacon Journal, Akron OH; East Side Daily News, Cleveland; and Media General's Tampa Tribune, and Radio WBVM FM; Gov. Francois Banga, Haut-Ogooue Province press corps, Franceville, Gabon, Central Africa; Iowa State University new bureau, Ames; and Cleveland State University Alumni Magazine. Additionally she has served since 2004 an advisor and media faculty of the International Centre for the Advancement of Journalism, Accra, Ghana.

From 1994-95 as part of the Teachers for Africa Program sponsored by the International Foundation for Education and Self Help, Ross began her first tour of duty as a volunteer, teaching computer literacy in French,and English as a foreign language at Lycee Professionnel Commercial in Franceville, Gabon, where she trained professors and students. Before that she was an assistant professor of mass communication at Central Missouri State University, Warrensburg, 1993-94. At CMSU, she taught copy editing and photography and was faculty supervisor of The Muleskinner campus newspaper.

Also at CMSU she designed and taught a 4000-level special topics course, "Three Faces of Africa International Affairs Writing and Culture Study Tour," for students and media professionals, in Egypt, Ghana and Togo.

The tour was directed by Ross in conjunction with the Hon. Minister A. Akbar Muhammad and the Nation of Islam Doctor's Mission to Ghana, including Buduburam Refugee Camp.

She has also worked on the faculty or professional staff at the UVI Humanities and Education Departments, St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John, (2009-2012; 1999-2002);Caribbean School of Catholic Communications-University of Toledo in Trinidad, West Indies (2001); Cleveland State University (1989-91); University of Missouri-Kansas City (1994-1996); CMSU,(1993-94); Iowa State University (1985-1988); and the University of Kansas-Lawrence (1980-82) and University of Kansas Medical Center (1982-83).

In her free time, Sandy enjoys African cooking and travel, playing bid whist, collecting African fetish art, gardening, and exhibiting her art work (photography, found object collages and installations).

However, doting on her great-grandson, Kameron, and grandchildren, Erica Brianne and Jackson Casey, gives her the most joy.