Armin Sethna

Armin Sethna

Deputy Director Bantwana

With nearly 25 years’ experience in both nonprofit and private sector work in South Africa, South America, and the United States, Armin brings a combination of strategic program design, organizational management, communications, and monitoring expertise to the WEI/Bantwana team.

Armin originally joined World Education’s Africa Division in 1993, supporting a multi-sectoral NGO capacity program in Namibia, before moving to South Africa in 1997 to help establish the USAID-funded Ntinga Microenterprise Support Program. From 2001 – 2008, as South Africa Country Director, Armin worked with and managed a multinational, multicultural team of staff that expanded WEI’s in-country footprint from microenterprise and microfinance capacity building into public-private business linkages as well as HIV-awareness and education. During that time, Armin helped lead a multi-country civil society strengthening program in Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia (funded by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa).

After a 10-year hiatus from development work, during which she operated an adventure travel business in Patagonia and supported higher education communications and fundraising in the US, Armin returned to the WEI/Bantwana family in early 2019. She currently supports our Waache Wasome (“Let them Learn”) program in Tanzania, which works to increase the educational enrollment and retention of adolescent girls by building their protective assets and addressing negative gender norms and practices that constrain girls’ prospects. Armin holds a master’s degree in Social Change and Development from Johns Hopkins University.