Darvin Ayre | Chairman
Darvin is President of Ayre & Associates, focusing his work in the areas of strategic planning, change management, leadership development, and effective teaming. He has consulted and taught in a variety of private, public, and non-profit environments throughout the U.S., central Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Bill Keller | Vice-Chairman
Bill has spent the last 33 years professionally involved in global financial markets, managing assets for small corporations and high-net-worth individuals. Bill is a full-time resident of Sausalito, California. He previously served as Chairman of the Sausalito City Council and is currently Chairman of the Planning Commission.

Dwight Mathis
As the Head of New Advisor Strategy and the Head of Business Development at Merrill Lynch, Dwight brings many years of experience in successful business leadership to dZi. He has an undergraduate degree from Appalachian State University, a CFP® certification, and an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Dwight currently works in New York City and lives with his family in Montclair, NJ.

Caroline Fisher, Ph.D.
Caroline serves as President of Fisher Consulting Group, a firm specializing in organizational effectiveness, group alignment, organizational direction setting, and corporate culture development. Her clients span a range of sectors, including public, private, and not-for-profit. Caroline holds a master's degree in organizational development and management, as well as a doctorate in organizational psychology.

Kimberly Johnson, M.D.
Kimberly is an emergency physician at San Juan Regional Medical Center's Urgent Care. Her educational experience includes a fellowship in ethnomedicine at Columbia University focusing on the importation of traditional medicine practices by immigrants in NYC—specifically in Dominican and Tibetan communities. Kimberly has traveled to the Himalaya nine times, served as an expedition physician for a Mount Everest climb in 1990, and held the position of Medical Director at a remote clinic in Bandipur, Nepal. She was recently a board member for the Wilderness Medical Society and currently serves as Co-Chairman of the Performance Evaluation Committee for dZi Foundation. Kimberly lives in Durango, CO.

Robert Roark
Bob is a primary care family medicine physician assistant who has committed his career to working with disadvantaged populations around the world. During his 27-year career he has used his training in public health and epidemiology to improve the lives of people in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. He collaborates with colleagues in the World Health Organization to initiate practical approaches to the management of childhood illnesses and has spent over a decade living and working in Africa to establish new community-based health projects.

Sarah Banister
Sarah Banister has a deep passion for Nepal and the Nepali people. She has taken many trips over the past 10 years to live and work in Nepal. During those trips she has worked in a variety of capacities with Ben Ayers—Nepal Country Director for dZi Foundation—and previously with Porters Progress. A school teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah, Sarah is deeply involved with the Bhutanese refugee population, a Nepali-speaking minority group originally from Nepal that has been resettled in the city. She is an avid marathon runner and has run a couple of marathons as fundraising endeavors for dZi Foundation.

Tony Lewis | Treasurer
Tony is Executive Director of the Donnell-Kay Foundation, a Denver-based organization focused on reforming state and district policies on education. He also serves on the boards of Envision Schools Colorado, Facing History and Ourselves, the School of Public Affairs at UCD, Get Smart Schools, Common Good Colorado, and Revolution Foods Colorado. In addition to leading climbs and treks throughout the world, Tony restores old trucks and is an active beekeeper, metalworker, and gardener.

ADVISORY BOARD

Buck Elliot | Advisory Board
Buck brings a strong organizational background to dZi, having just completed his term as Board Chairman of Gore Range Natural Science School in the Vail Valley. He was a founding director of the Vail Leadership Institute—a leadership development organization focused on inside-first principles—and is also a founding director of the 10th Mountain Division Hut System. Buck is a longtime resident of Vail, CO.

Stephanie Fuhrman | Advisory Board
Stephanie Fuhrman oversees Riverstone Residential Group core service groups and initiatives including property marketing, education, creative services, and National Practices. Prior to joining Riverstone, Stephanie was a principal in a multifamily brokerage firm focused on REITs, pension fund advisors, and privately held corporations. Stephanie holds an EMBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and an undergraduate degree in finance from Washington State University. She is a licensed real estate broker in Washington and Oregon.

Peter Hackett, MD | Advisory Board
Peter is a world-recognized authority on high-altitude medicine and a lover of the Himalaya and its people. He has climbed Everest, lived in Nepal for six years, and been instrumental in starting the Himalayan Rescue Association. He now works as the ER director at the Telluride Medical Center and also staffs the Altitude Research Center at the University of Colorado School of Health Sciences in Denver.

Ace Kvale | Advisory Board
As a professional photographer, Ace has an insatiable appetite for world travel. His favorite destinations, when he's not roaming around the southwest canyon country, are the mountain regions of Asia and the Himalayas. Ace generously donates photos for dZi Foundation’s ads, website, brochures, and fundraising events.

Caleb Sevian | Advisory Board
Caleb lives in Boulder, Colorado and brings a strong financial background to dZi. He is a portfolio manager for the University of Colorado Foundation, where his responsibilities include manager selection, due diligence, asset allocation, and the development and maintenance of the risk-management program.

US Senator Mark Udall | Advisory Board
Senator Udall's connection to dZi is his passion for the Himalaya and his personal relationships with many current dZi board members from when he was Executive Director of Colorado Outward Bound (1985 to 1995). An avid outdoorsman, he has climbed all the Colorado 14ers (54 in total) and attempted some of the most challenging peaks in the world—including Mt. Everest.

John W. Byrd, Ph.D. | Advisory Board
John's Ph.D. in finance and MPPM in public policy analysis provide him with the valuable knowledge to help evaluate dZi programs. He has received several teaching awards, including the Shell Teaching Excellence Award in 1989 and the MBA Outstanding Teacher Award in 1988, 1990, and 1992. John has taught in Nepal, India, Egypt, China, and France.

Sherry Dorward | Advisory Board
Sherry is a landscape architect specializing in high-altitude environments. Her avid interest in the Himalayas began when, after earning her master's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, she won a U.S. government fellowship to work for a year in Kashmir on solutions to environmental and land-use issues. Based in Vail, Colorado for the past twenty years, she has worked on master plans and landscape designs for a variety of public- and private-sector clients throughout the western U.S. and abroad, including ski resorts, mountain towns, schools, library and recreation districts, residential developers, and mountain homeowners. She has won numerous awards for her design and planning work and is the author of a textbook on designing in the mountains. She is a frequent guest lecturer on issues related to tourism, development, and sustainability in mountain regions.

Michael J. Moniz | Advisory Board
Michael J. Moniz is the co-founder, President, and CEO of Circadence and has established the company as a leader in the Network Optimization and Cyber-Defense Market. Mr. Moniz has been a two-time finalist for Ernst and Young’s prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and he is featured in the New York Times best-selling book “How to Act Like a CEO” by Debra Benton. He is an avid alpinist who co-holds the world speed record for his ascent of the 50 highest mountains in the U.S. in 43 days, has summited five of the Seven Summits, including Mt. Everest and is one of the few individuals to hold the distinction of summiting two 8,000 meter peaks (Mt. Everest and Lohtse) within 24 hours. In 2010, National Geographic named Mr. Moniz one of their Ultimate Adventurers.

Candra Canning | Advisory Board
Candra is the President of Live Bright Now, a dynamic leadership and training consultancy with a mission to ignite individuals and teams inside organizations to deepen their engagement in their work, optimize their results and satisfaction and truly enrich their lives. A vibrant motivational speaker, Candra presents to Fortune 500 companies, national conferences, and local leadership organizations. Candra’s compelling insights into the business world and her own personal strengths come from over 25 years experience abroad — in Asia, Europe, as well as Central and South America — and in leading organizations in the United States.

Robin Houston | Advisory Board
Dr. Houston has worked in international public health and epidemiology for the past 20 years, following clinical practice in rural settings. Dr. Houston has focused on maternal and child health; nutrition; infectious diseases; and community-based approaches; with an emphasis on monitoring and evaluation and program design. He was resident in Nepal from 1983-1989, and has focused consultancy work in Zambia. He has worked extensively in both Africa and Asia, and is currently involved with several ongoing projects.