by Merritt Frey, Executive Director

We are truly pleased to welcome a new member to our Board of Directors, AJ Davis. She joins our dedicated band of board members in guiding the organization and serving as ambassadors for our work. I sent AJ a few questions to help everyone get to know her just a little bit. Please read on to hear what AJ had to share.

What inspired you to join Mali Rising’s board?

I love Mali Rising’s mission: empower the children of Mali, West Africa by expanding and improving educational opportunities for them within their own village. I believe that education provides greater economic choice and freedom, which ultimately leads to better health and life outcomes. 

What is your first project you’ve taken on as a board member?

My first project was reviewing the Mali Rising website and it’s Google Analytics results. This review helped us understand what website visitors are doing now and to uncover ways we can improve the experience. 

With these insights, we’ve found ways to update the website to better serve its purposes: 

• increasing awareness of Mali Rising’s mission and service

• making it easy for volunteers to find and sign up for opportunities

• increase donations to support the mission

In the long-term, what do you hope to contribute during your time on the board?

I’m excited to help the board find the right metrics to track our progress and impact - and to help tell the story from this data. 

In the coming months, we’ll be creating language assessments to understand where students are in their French skills throughout their middle school education. In building the assessment, we’ll be finding the right balance between the resources and time it takes to do the assessment - and getting a strong enough signal to make critical decisions on. This information will help us understand our impact, and will help our teachers tailor strategies to their students’ needs.

I am also looking forward to contributing to the development of a brand new idea — a program focused on fostering entrepreneurship thinking and skills in our students. Beyond their middle school education, we’re looking to build programming that exposes students to the possible career paths ahead of them. We also plan to identify key business skills that could be developed in interactive and fun ways.

What do you like to do when you are not being a dedicated board member?

I live in Austin, Texas with my partner, Andrey and our two pups, Leo and Liz.  I spend my days thinking about customer research and data as a conversion rate optimization specialist. My company, Experiment Zone, helps online businesses improve their websites, so they can get more conversions & grow their revenue.  When I’m not working, I love spending time outdoors, playing pickleball, or hiking.