Team Profiles
Sharon A Beesley
Sharon A Beesley (Bees), is the President of the Kathmandu Kids Club. Bees is co-founder of The ISIS Group, a group established in 1997 on a wing and a prayer to generate funds to help support The ISIS Foundation, a non-profit organisation which strives to make a positive difference to the lives of children in Nepal and Uganda.
Despite all odds and many difficulties, the ISIS Group has grown substantially over the last 12 years so they are now able to touch the lives of many hundreds of people in Nepal and Uganda. They are also fortunate to be able to work with some amazing people on both the business and non-profit sides of ISIS. Bees, in addition to her involvement with managing The ISIS Foundation, is responsible for running the legal and consultancy businesses of The ISIS Group.
Bees is a lawyer who spent 8 years with a leading international law firm, Linklaters, in their London and Hong Kong offices. She also worked in South Africa, and for the last 16 years has been based in Bermuda. As a fox-hunting vegetarian, Bees has learnt to embrace paradox, which is helpful for running ISIS. The main person in her life is her son Jean-Jacques, who is a teenager getting ready to take on the world.
To send an email to Bees please click here.
Natasha Merino
Natasha is the Vice President of the Kathmandu Kids Club.
She hasn’t decided what she wants to do when she grows up but has so far: picked blueberries, co-ordinated a kids club, worked at a health food shop, Chinese restaurant, a pharmacy, been a promo girl at the world go-karting championships in Okalahoma, Bathurst 1000 and the Rugby World Cup in Sydney, toured with a rock band, valet parked in Holland, developed photographs for a newspaper, worked at an art school and a music store in Belgium, and more recently has worked as an Executive Assistant within the legal profession.
Natasha’s friends and family describe her as high energy – a perfect requirement for this role.
To counter her excess energy Natasha practices yoga and meditation and partakes in other calming hobbies such as, bird watching, photography, gardening, sailing, wakeboarding and jewellery and paper making.
Natasha has worked with the World Vision sponsorship program and is a mentor to 2 teenagers in Bermuda.
To send an email to Natasha please click here.
Kim Carter
Kim Carter is Chair of the Kathmandu Kids Club.
Kim’s background is so diverse and interesting, that he is hard to describe in anything other than a series of bizarrely disparate dot points. (No, Kim, we’re not letting you write your own biography.) So here goes:
- For twelve years, he owned and operated a company which made, sold, imported, and exported bathroom accessories and electrical components. This went brilliantly, so he sold it. Since then (1989) he has been involved in jobs he likes even better.
- He is a Certified Hedge Fund Specialist (CHFS) and a director of Tribley Asset Management Ltd, a company managing a fund of hedge funds.
- He was Chaiman/Director of Macquarie Capital Alliance International Limited from 2005 – 2008, when it was successfully taken private and he is currently a Director of Macquarie MCG International Limited, a Macquarie Bank-linked fund, listed and traded on the Australian stock exchange.
- He is the only person we know who has studied Mountaineering and Ice Climbing in Ecuador.
- Once upon a time, he formed a company which published non-fiction books.
- Then, along with others, he partnered in a start-up called Salt Kettle Publishing Ltd (SKPL.) SKPL purchased the magazine Bermuda Homes & Gardens and in January 1998 launched an arts and entertainment magazine, SALT. SKPL was sold in 2001.
- Kim was a long-term committee member (1991 – 2008) of the Bermuda Squash Racquets Association (BSRA) and was Chair of the international squash tournaments the Bermuda Open, The PSA Masters 2005 and 2006, and the World Open 2007. The contract securing the latter three tournaments was the largest in the sport’s history, with each tournament televised to more than 625 million viewers.
- He and a friend once raised US$160 000 for a Bermudian charity by cycling the length of the UK, taking an obscure route.
- He was a saxophonist in the Bermuda Blues Band, Shaky Ground, whose greatest claim to fame is a performance with Hootie and the Blowfish.
- Whilst scuba diving in Bermuda in 1994, he discovered a shipwreck. This has now been determined to be a Dutch ship, thought to have been wrecked in around 1640.
The Kathmandu Kids Club is Kim’s brainchild. He not only loves the idea of raising substantial funds for children in need in Nepal, but is keen to see the concept of ‘collective sponsorship’ of children work better than the notion of individual sponsorship.
To send an email to Kim please click here.
Charles Reilly
Charles Reilly is Audio Visual Manager for the Kathmandu Kids Club. By day Charles is a mild-mannered Video producer and filmmaker. His company, Lime Productions, specializes in all things multimedia and his clients include Ford Motor Company, Eddie Bauer, J Crew, and Details Magazine. Charles has written, directed and produced several short films. His films have aired all around the world from Sydney – where he was nominated for best actor) to Stockholm, New York and locally at the Bermuda International Film Festival (BIFF.)
Charles is also a professional photographer with many of his photographs appearing in Bermudian magazines and newspapers. Charles started in animation and trained with some of the best in the business. His teachers included members of Industrial Light & Magic and Star Trek (Next Generation).
Locally Charles is known for his work on the Lindo’s and Phoenix commercials and for a documentary he produced, The Returnees, which followed four Bermudians of Portuguese heritage returning to the Azores to meet their history.
To send an email to Charles please click here.
Bonnie L. McGlynn
Bonnie McGlynn is Membership Manager for the Kathmandu Kids Club. For a day job, Bonnie is the principal of the Dame Marjorie Bean Hope Academy. Hope Academy is a multi-purpose built school for students ranging from 4 to 19 years of age, with multiple disabilities.
Before joining Hope Academy, Bonnie was an education officer at the Ministry of Education and Development in Bermuda. During that time, she also worked at the Bermuda College and Wheelock College, Massachusetts as an adjunct professor, in the evenings. Previously, Bonnie was a teacher in the Government school system for 7 years
Bonnie has a Master’s Degree in education from Boston University and a BA in psychology from Mt. Allison University
Bonnie’s capacity for endurance has been tested in backpacking trips through Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador. She has also spent time on a Russian research vessel on its way to Antarctica.
Bonnie is currently a member of the Bermuda Disabilities Commission, a Government-appointed commission, set up to develop and advise on a disability strategy for the island. She is also a director of The Friends of Hope Academy, a charitable trust incorporated to support children with disabilities on a variety of levels.
She doesn’t like to admit this, but as she’s not writing her profile, we can say it… In secret, she is a MEAN slalom water skier.
To send an email to Bonnie please click here.
Tom Quinn
Tom Quinn is responsible for the Web Site Design & Management of www.kathmandukidsclub.com.
Tom grew up in Germany and Holland and then trained as an interpreter in German and Russian, before finally becoming involved with computers in the early 1990s. Since then Tom has worked for several blue-chip companies designing and implementing workflow, data warehouse and web solutions. One of his most notable projects was helping to build a data warehouse for the Malt Distilling division of an international drinks company, an arduous task which involved visiting many of their distilleries in Scotland.
Tom’s interests include squash and sailing. He is a keen photographer, and has a photography site as well as his own web log. He works for a publicly-traded insurance/reinsurance company. You can follow him on twitter using @tommquinn.
To send an email to Tom please click here.
Jennie Lee O’Donnell
Jennie Lee O’Donnell is the Vice-Chair for the Kathmandu Kids Club. She was a commercial litigation lawyer in northern New Jersey, USA until her premature retirement eleven years ago when she moved to the Island following her husband, Kevin, who works in reinsurance. In a flurry of activity to keep busy in her new Bermuda life, Jennie Lee began volunteering for Bermuda Riding for the Disabled and joined the Executive Board of the International Women’s Club – Bermuda (IWC) where she served for nine years fundraising for local and international charities. Jennie Lee first learned of ISIS when the IWC was approached to give funds for the ISIS Foundation’s neo-natal clinic in Uganda. Intrigued and inspired by the ideals of ISIS, she joined the Kathmandu Kids Club and eventually caught up with its Chairman, Kim Carter, for a chat. One latte later she was fired up and ready to get to work!
For her current day job Jennie Lee cares for their three energetic young daughters, Emma, Mollie and Hailey, specialising in transportation and birthday party organisation, i.e. a “SMIP” (Soccer Mom in Paradise.) She loves travel, books, tennis, gardening, dude ranches and entertaining and actively pursues running and Pilates as a means to sustain a lifestyle of overeating and good wine.
Alex Hasselkuss
Alex Hasselkuss is the Fundraising Manager for Kathmandu Kids Club. When Alex held a 3rd birthday party for her older daughter, she requested that parents bring donations to the Club instead of presents. Very motivated by the generosity shown at a young child’s birthday party, Alex feels she is an excellent fit for this role.
In 2008, Alex left the catastrophe risk modeling and management world after more than 10 years to spend her days with daughters, Zoe, now age 6, and Jasmin, age 4. She started as an analyst with Risk Management Solutions in California and was most recently a catastrophe risk specialist at ACE Limited in Bermuda. Although thrilled to be at home with the girls, she hopes to find risk modeling software to help her successfully manage the catastrophic events occurring daily in her house, and to calculate figures such as the probabilities of temper tantrums in public and the expected annual losses to furniture.
In addition to her daughters, Alex shares her home with über-husband Dirk (he’s German) and Chama the ever-excited dog. Any spare time is spent working with several other charities in addition to KatKids, practicing yoga, running, or reading, and trying to follow the Dalai Lama’s advice to “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”
Alex holds Bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Human Biology from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and grew up in a small town in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
To send an email to Alex please click here.
Karen Clare
Karen Clare is Newsletter Manager for Kathmandu Kids Club.
Karen hails from that well known town of Peebles, in the Scottish Borders. She worked in public housing in Edinburgh before coming to Bermuda in 1989 to enter the reinsurance industry. She also worked for the animal research station that cloned Dolly, but the least said about that the better! She is a Chartered Management Accountant and holds an MBA from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.
She is married to Stuart and they have two daughters Sophie and Alexandra. She finds that her training and skill level in this area is sadly lacking, therefore she still works periodically, some would say very infrequently, where she has at least some chance of knowing what she is doing.
Until recently she was very involved in the Caledonian Society in Bermuda, which benefits local charities from funds raised at their raucous social bashes. Over the years she served as President, Treasurer and Secretary. Having been a keen horsewoman back in Scotland she has recently started volunteering at Riding for the Disabled. Her interests include the gym, skiing and having fun with her many good friends. Her only sporting achievement is coming last in the Triathlon World Championships in Muskoka, Canada back in 1994. Those days are long gone….
Karen is the newest addition to the team. Her duties include managing and collating the articles contributed to the Newsletter, i.e. nagging the contributors on a constant basis, a task her husband says she is well equipped for.
To send an email to Karen please click here.
Laura Haynes
Laura is the Treasurer for the Kathmandu Kids Club.
Laura was persuaded to move to Bermuda back in 2007 by her boyfriend, Ben and has been enjoying life here ever since. Originally from England, Laura welcomed the warmer climate.
Laura has a BA in Management Studies and is a qualified Chartered Accountant. Having survived five years in public accounting, working for a mid tier firm in the UK and for Ernst & Young in Bermuda, Laura now works in the reinsurance industry. Laura joined RenaissanceRe’s finance department in November 2009 as a reinsurance accountant and also has the ARe designation.
Keen to become involved with a local charity and someone who loves to organise, Laura was happy to take on the newly vacant role as Treasurer for the Kathmandu Kids Club. Inspired by the great work of the Club, Laura feels fortunate to be able to join the team. Laura enjoys the outdoors and in the future may be convinced to sign-up for one of the Treks.
Laura is an avid runner, completing the New York Marathon in 2009, and can often be seen early in the morning running along South Shore. Laura is also assisting MAAC running club as a Race Director for one of local races in 2011. At the weekend you are most likely to spot her running around on a rugby field or out socialising with friends.
To send an email to Laura please click here.
Annie Glasspool
Born and educated in the UK, Annie came to Bermuda in 1987 after a stint wrestling alligators in Louisiana and tagging turtles in Costa Rica. Continuing with this environmental theme, she followed an M.Sc. in Fisheries Management with a Ph.D in Marine Biology studying Bermuda’s reef fish. She readily admits this was a guise to spend as much time as possible SCUBA diving, and nowadays is an avid underwater photographer. She is currently contemplating cave diver certification, a qualification she sees as essential preparation before ever attempting to dive in her murky native UK waters.
From 1997 until 2008, Annie led the Bermuda Biodiversity Project building, a local team of scientists researching Bermuda’s marine and terrestrial environments (further opportunity for blowing bubbles and romping in the woods) and promoting local conservation action. She has served on various management, research, advisory and education committees for local NGO’s and the Bermuda Government. Nowadays Annie is the Environmental Project Manager for Triton Renewable Energy Ltd., exploring the use of wave energy for the Island, as well as working as an independent environmental consultant.
In her spare time, Annie crews on charter boats and paints houses and boats, including her own 30 ft sailboat Hushabye, which was ‘home sweet home’ for 17 years. Her pride and joy though is the dinghy she built, ‘Slippery Dick’. After stepping down as Secretary of the Bermuda Squash Racquets Association, Annie was no match for Kim’s persuasive pitch and is thoroughly enjoying her new role as KatKids Secretary.
To send an email to Annie please click here.
Nicola Jones
Nicola is Event Manager of the Kathmandu Kids Club.
After growing up in Liverpool, England and finishing her degree in International Business, Nicola escaped the rain and drizzle and moved to France for seven years. In between the French vineyards, mastering the language and the snowboarding in the Alps, Nicola began her career organizing events at a top French Business School offering offsite education for students in Serbia, Moldova and China. Nicola then decided to spread her wings and travel the world as an account manager in the fast paced world of Formula One motor racing.
After a while Nicola became tired from the travelling and the noisy motor cars and decided to slow down the pace, giving island life a try when she moved to Bermuda in 2008. Nicola took on the role as a wedding planner on the island, catering events of all sizes and believes that this colourful position gave her the skills and contacts needed to be able to survive the Kathmandu Kids Event Manager role! Nicola knows from experience the hard work involved organizing events but also knows the enjoyment and pride that comes with it and is impatient to start helping such a tremendously worthwhile cause.
In her spare time Nicola is a sports fanatic always running, playing squash or enjoying her newly appointed position of Captain of the Renegades Woman’s Rugby team.
To send an email to Nicola please click here.
Melissa Moore
Melissa Moore is the school liaison for the Kids Kathmandu Club.
Melissa hails originally from Bermuda but spent her formative years navigating foreign waters and lands: Arctic and Antarctic waters and many seas in between, sailing with her father aboard his boat, “War Baby.”
Melissa likes to create…her first business was selling bumper stickers to local merchants before being shipped off to boarding school to the USA. Creation continued with remodeling a former Victorian in the Fifth Ward district of Newport, RI. (no money made there but…) and a stint at documentary film making in Boston. Melissa’s worked with Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop, was her foray into community service projects in the late 80s, spear heading special projects as The Body Shop grew into the US market.
A move back to Bermuda with her husband Sean began the creation of a menagerie – Four children, plus dogs, cats, guinea pigs, hamsters and buggies. This has been her current employment in addition to helping sculpt the Montessori School that today is known as Somersfield Academy. In addition, she is now trained as a yoga teacher and is happily pursuing this passion. Melissa studied at Colorado College in Colorado Springs and gained a B.A. in English Lit. Her writing skills continue to be honed as she guides her kids with their school papers (at times to their chagrin). Other passions include: anything environmental, kayaking, rowing, diving, skiing, adventure travel and photography.
To send an email to Melissa please click here.
Stephen Benn
Stephen is the database manager for the Kathmandu Kids Club.
Stephen entered the University of Waterloo with the intent of studying computer science but one fateful night during his first year changed all that. On his way home from playing a gig at a nearby bar late one Saturday night, he cut through campus and witnessed some classmates playing, well, some sort of role-playing game in costume. It was then he realized that he’d never be able to apply enough tape to his glasses, or hike up his pants high enough to fit in properly. As luck would have it, not long after that night a large consulting firm was having an actuarial recruiting event at one of Stephen’s favourite bars and between the beer, the fantastic munchies, and the fun keychain puzzle thing they were giving away, becoming an actuary seemed like a fantastic idea.
After graduation Stephen worked in the Toronto area for a few years. Near the end of that time his girlfriend (now wife) announced she was moving to Bermuda – seemed like an interesting adventure, so he decided to move as well and that was that! Shortly after the move to Bermuda Stephen took up sailing and, despite his tendency to fall off stationary boats, he has competed successfully in everything from Bermuda Fitted Dinghies to the Newport to Bermuda race.
To send an email to Steve please click here.
Tammy Boss
Tammy is the Volunteers Manager for Kathmandu Kids Club.
Taking over from Lorraine McConachie Tammy is filling some big and devoted shoes as the Volunteers Manager but she’s ready for the challenge.
A true proud Canadian, Tammy is from Edmonton, Alberta where she was an established marketing professional spinning with the media, throwing masquerade balls and publishing magazines. She was the sales manager for a pretty cool magazine called Western Living, and then moved into non-profit to do events and marketing with her alma-mater, Concordia University College of Alberta. Tammy was a little bit of a nut when it came to hockey and Canadian football and was right in her element when she worked with the local CFL team to lead one of the best celebrity golf tournaments Edmonton has ever hosted. It was a perfect world but then she met a man and he swept her off her feet. She left all of her fame and fortune and moved to Bermuda to be with her new hubby, Dima Mnushkin (a fellow Canadian but not a sports nut at all!). She doesn’t hobnob with the media or have dinner with sports celebrities, now she has a bigger and busier job – raising mermaids and princesses (shhhh, don’t tell her daughters that they are not…they haven’t a clue).
Tammy is also a birth doula supporting expecting moms and dads welcome their children into the world. A thing she really stumbled upon living in Bermuda. Tammy and Dima shared two amazing births together with a doula and so she couldn’t say no when the opportunity came to train as a birth doula on the island. That is a career switch by about 180 degrees.
Having been in Bermuda for nearly 8 years she has been connected to KatKids right from the beginning. While working at ISIS for a few months she recalls the great news from Leonie when KatsKids helped to fund the rescue of over 130 children and bring them to a safer place…a profound and meaningful new beginning for the children. Tammy and her family have been connected to ISIS ever since. Who knew she would come back to be the Volunteers Manager?
To send an email to Tammy please click here.
Liz Martin
Born not far from Sir George Somers home town Lyme Regis, Liz grew up in the south west of England, finally settling in North Wiltshire until making the hop across the Atlantic to Bermuda in 1989. Liz spent four years at Art School studying (well I’m not sure that’s quite the right term, maybe ‘playing at’) Graphic Design. The serious stuff and earning a living commenced way back in 1982 where Liz worked in a variety of advertising and promotions roles in the South West and London.
Following an amazing Christmas spent in Bermuda, Liz was lucky to land a job at one of Bermuda’s top Ad Agencies – AAC Saatchi Saatchi, where in 1996 she left to have her twin daughters. After a four year break and using her creativity to raise two small children, she then returned to work at AdVantage Limited, until she took the opportunity to work from home.
In her spare time Liz likes to play squash (a lot!), and in fact met several of the other past and present managers through the Squash Club and has travelled quite extensively to play the game for Bermuda!
Her twin daughters are now at boarding school, so plenty of time to devote to KatKids, after being gently arm-twisted by former squash foe Kim Carter.
To send an email to Liz please click here.
Marthe Peterson
Marthe Peterson is Marketing Manager for the Kathmandu Kids Club. Formerly an ambitious, career-driven marketing professional in Boston, Marthe shifted gears and became a stay-at-home Mom to Jack and Lily when opportunity beckoned her husband, and the pink sand and warm Bermuda sun wonderfully sabotaged her 5-year plan.
Before Bermuda, Marthe graduated with a Business degree from a small town in Rhode Island and worked in advertising and corporate marketing positions in the financial services and telecommunications space. Living in New England her entire life was expected to be perfectly fine until she moved to the land of pinks, greens, and blues, and met so many fun, interesting people. It was a good move.
Serving as COO of the Peterson Group, she applied her strategic thinking and effective project management skills to negotiating accurate and timely homework completion, as well as coordinating parent volunteer work, play dates, and after-school activities. As stimulating as this was, Marthe actually left it all for a brief stint in the corporate marketing world of Bermuda, which confirmed her strong dislike for this type of work and a desire to do something different – and more meaningful, if she was fortunate. Luckily for her, Kathmandu Kids Club was seeking a Marketing Manager and she is now excited to promote the KatKids brand, to increase interest in supporting the organization’s activities (marketing speak for “bring in the donations”) .
For fun, Marthe enjoys running (more recently this has meant jogging quickly), trying new recipes (and wine), reading, travel, and spending time with family and friends.
To send an email to Marthe please click here.
A huge thank you goes out to all our past Kathmandu Kids Club managers.
