Olive Damian Luena
Olive Damian Luena is currently the General Manager (CEO) of the Tanzania Gatsby Trust (TGT), established in 1992 for the relief of poverty and the advancement of education.
Prior to this, Ms. Luena worked in a government plastic manufacturing company as a human resources manager. Mrs. Luena is the founding co-chair and a Board member of the East Africa Grantmakers Association (EAAG), a trustee of the East Africa Centre for Philanthropy (UFADHILI), and founding Secretary-General (1988-95) of the Tanzania Association of NGOs. She was also the international president of the World Conference of Religion and Peace (1993-98) and a 1998/1999 nominee for the Africa Hunger Prize. In 1990, she was appointed by Pope John Paul II as a member of the Vatican Pontifical Council of the Laity and was recently appointed by the president of the United Republic of Tanzania as a trustee to the Presidential Trust Fund, her third appointment. Mrs. Luena is very engaged in promoting social justice and philanthropy at both local and international levels.
Ms. Luena holds a post-graduate degree in industrial management, a degree in personnel management, and has also studied at the Cranfield School of Management in the U.K. and the Economic Institute at Boulder, Colorado, USA specializing in microfinance. In 1984, she was sponsored by the Commonwealth Foundation for a study on Gender and Policy at the Institute for Development Studies (Sussex University). In addition to being a Synergos fellow, she is also an Eisenhower Fellow and Johns Hopkins University International Philanthropy Fellow.
TGT is based on the premise that there is an underlying productive potential in the informal enterprise sector which is yet to be mobilized, as reflected in the high levels of unemployment, under-employment and low incomes. To achieve its poverty alleviation targets, TGT engages in the provision of credit, training, marketing, technology and low cost housing. Through these efforts the Trust has alleviated human suffering of thousands of SMEs in Tanzania and has embarked on building an endowment fund for the sustainability of its work.
