School Board
In even-numbered years, two of the elected board members must be American citizens employed at the U.S. Embassy, and the other elected board member must be a Cameroonian national. In odd-numbered years, two elected board members must be American citizens employed at the U.S. Embassy, and the other must be a non-American citizen.
Please meet our 2020-2021 Board members below:
Austen Nwaochei (President)
Austen Nwaochei is an independent management and technology consultant with over 15 years of industry and consulting experience. Austen has worked and consulted for different Fortune 100 companies such as Chevron, Deloitte Consulting, Cisco Systems, Ross Stores, among others. Austen has an MBA from the University of California, Davis and a B.S in Computer Science from Lincoln University, PA. Austen is married and has two children enrolled at ASOY.
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James Nelson (Vice President)
James Nelson is currently serving as the U.S. Ambassador's Representative on the Board of Directors. James has a Bachelor of Business Administration Degree Finance and Real Estate from Baylor University and is a graduate of the Southwestern Graduate School of Banking at Southern Methodist University. He brings a seventeen-year career in community and commercial banking in Texas to the Board including almost fifteen years of nonprofit and community volunteer and board experience. He has two children at ASOY.
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Jean Marcel Monkam (Treasurer)
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Cherisse Wilson (Secretary)
Cherise Wilson is an experienced registered nurse since 2004. She has worked both clinically in the emergency department and within leadership (quality improvement and systems engineering) at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. She has a master’s degree (from the University of Maryland-Baltimore) in education and executive practice which has strengthened her ability to work collaboratively to push out education and policies throughout the entire Johns Hopkins Health System. As a continuous educator and student, she seeks out evidence-based data and practices to apply to real-life situations. From February 2019 through May 2021, she was employed as a registered nurse at the US Embassy Nairobi. Throughout the COVID pandemic, she leveraged her love of IT to create a comprehensive tracking system to keep the US American Embassy community well monitored.
Cherisse and her husband will move to Cameroon in July 2021 for a two-year tour with their two sons who are enrolled in Grades 6 and 2. Originally from the state of Maryland, this will be the second international school that her children have enrolled in. Previously her family was posted in Nairobi, Kenya and she wishes to share and learn from past and current experiences.
She looks forward to meeting this new community and working to uphold values and continue the growth of ASOY.
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Mary Daschbach (Embassy Representative)
Mary Daschbach is the Deputy Chief of Mission to the U.S. Embassy in Cameroon, currently serving as Chargé d’Affaires a.i. Most recently she has served as the Senior POLAD to the Strategy, Engagement, and Programs Directorate (J5) at U.S. Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany and Deputy Chief of Mission in the Republic of Congo. Ms Daschbach began her foreign service career in Ghana as the Information Officer, followed by assignments to the United Kingdom as a Consular Officer, Togo and Costa Rica as the Public Affairs Officer, and Washington as Desk Officer for Paraguay and Uruguay, and Director of the Southern and Central Asia Office in the Bureau of International Information Programs.
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Member at Large
Julien Besancon
Damiano Beltrame