Our Team

Colleen Mascenik

President and Executive Director
Colleen is a mother and development economist committed to inspiring teens to be curious about the world around them. During her 18 years as a financial economist at the World Bank Group, Colleen contributed to development policy loan programs, assessments of financial system stability and development, and micro-level projects to improve financial consumer behavior in projects in Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. Recognizing the potential for massively scaling individualized learning supported by human networks, she created the BreakAway Learning Project.

Heng Sok

President and Executive Director
Heng is the Head of Smart Axiata Innovation Lab at Zaman University in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The lab is the first university-based lab in the country that utilizes a practical learning approach and embraces out-of-the-classroom learning. Several start-ups coming out of this lab have won local and international awards. Heng is also the fellow of Startup@ASEAN. Heng’s research focuses on combinatorial auction theory.

Karanja Muraya

Treasurer
Karanja is Founder and Executive Director of the Social Welfare Development Programme, SOWED, in Nairobi, Kenya. SOWED plays a leading role in advocacy and capacity building for health, gender equality, and social justice in Kenya. SOWED works closely with the Ministry of Education and UNDP in implementing projects for social welfare. His previous positions included program management and coordination at the National Counter-Terrorism Centre, The National Democratic Institute, and at the Electoral Commission of Kenya. Karanja’s research interests span governance and counter-terrorism to innovation in education and child protection.

Benazir Noorzad

Secretary
Benazir is a Public Relations and Communications Officer at the French Medical Institute for Mothers and Children, in Kabul, Afghanistan. A native of Bamyan, Benazir fled with her family to Pakistan during the Afghanistan war, returning as a teenager to complete her secondary education in Afghanistan. She created the first-ever Model United Nations Conference for teens in Afghanistan in 2015, and organized the first summer school leadership program for teens in 2016. She won a scholarship to the American University of Central Asia, where she completed a Bachelor’s degree in Internaitonal Relations.