Mr. Cicero earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington and Jefferson College. He is a Certified Public Accountant, and a Certified Building Service Executive.

Ruth Entwistle is a Board Member of Deep Springs International and its primary founder. Appreciating the importance of small business and education to alleviating poverty, Ms. Entwistle envisioned an organization that would create jobs and provide clean water, first in Haiti and then in other developing nations.With the help of a startup team that included DSI Board members Michael Ritter and Timothy Mech, this vision was distilled into a business plan that formed the basis for Deep Springs International.

In addition to her work with Deep Springs, Ms. Entwistle has served several non-profit organizations including Hope for the Children of Haiti and Wycliffe Bible Translators, and has had numerous cross cultural experiences in the Dominican Republic, Croatia, China and Haiti.

Ms. Entwistle earned a BS in Entrepreneurship at Grove City College, and completed her MBA in International Economic Development from Eastern University’s School of Leadership and Development in December of 2008. In addition, Ms. Entwistle has attended many conferences related to international development, presenting her own research on youth entrepreneurship at the Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture in October, 2008.

M. Elizabeth Kemeny has held various leadership positions in health care over the past 25 years. In the last eight years, as a consultant, she has evaluated a variety of systems including staff development in long-term care, train-the-trainer curricula for disability sport skill attainment, and the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s Barrier Elimination/ Building Healthier Communities project.

Currently, she serves as co-Principal Investigator on a grant funded by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania to analyze staff development practices for Direct Care Workers who serve aging individuals with developmental disabilities in the state of Pennsylvania. Ms. Kemeny currently is Research Coordinator for the Center on Disability and Health at Slippery Rock University and an instructor in a Master of Science program at Slippery Rock University.

Ms. Kemeny also has served as a grant writer for World Vision’s Gifts-in-Kind program, Board Member for the United Way, and in numerous other volunteer capacities.

Ms. Kemeny earned a BA degree in Sociology with Honors, Summa Cum Laude, at Wake Forest University and an MS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1990. She is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Leadership and Administration of Nonprofits and the Public Sector at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

 Timothy S. Mech, Chairman of the Board, is Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship at Grove City College, with expertise in poverty alleviation through business and entrepreneurship. Dr. Mech has taught at the University of Rochester, Saint John Fisher College, Boston College, Suffolk University, and Grove City College, and has been a visiting research professor at the Université d’Angers in France. Professor Mech is the recipient of numerous research grants, two teaching awards, and the Trzaska Award for “his positive impact on Boston College students.” Dr. Mech’s current activities include research into the design of a new type of retirement fund that channels a portion of the assets into investments that fight poverty, the development of microenterprise training materials, and various poverty reducing projects, primarily in India. Dr. Mech has presented his work at numerous universities and conferences.

Michael Ritter is President of Deep Springs and In-Country Director. Mr. Ritter has held positions as a researcher for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Center for Global Safe Water at Emory University, and the Task Force for Child Survival and Development. His study on determinants of adoption of household water treatment in rural Haiti is in the process of publication. As principal investigator on a grant from the Religion and Health Collaborative at Emory University, he provided safe water consulting services for churches and small NGOs in Haiti and led a team of graduate students that studied the relationship between churches, faith-based organizations and safe water projects in Haiti.

Mr. Ritter holds a BS in molecular biology from Grove City College, and a Masters of Public Health from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, where he was the 2008 recipient of the Eugene J. Gangarosa Award for outstanding service and promise in the international arena. Both a scholar and an athlete, Mr. Ritter is one of the few men in Grove City College’s history to be recognized as both the outstanding senior man and the outstanding senior male athlete.

Gerald Walle has extensive experience leading high tech companies. Currently Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of Navico, AS., Mr. Walle’s distinguished career includes his service as President and CEO of IBEX Process Technology, a software startup, President and COO of Aavid Thermalloy, the leading supplier of thermal management solutions for electronics, Chief Financial Officer of Empirix, Inc., a provider of test and monitoring solutions for Web, data and voice applications, and Vice President and General Manager of the Microelectronics Division of Millipore, later a public company known as Mykrolis, a high technology corporation that develops, manufactures and sells a broad range of fluid delivery and purification products for the microelectronics industries. Mr. Walle also worked as Principal of The Leeman Group, where he was an adviser to the CEOs and top management of mid-size industrial companies and start-ups, and served as interim CEOs of companies during transition periods.

In addition to his extensive business experience, Mr. Walle has been on the boards of nonprofit organizations, including Hope for the Children of Haiti, where he served as Chairman, and Rebuild Africa. Mr. Walle has traveled to Haiti many times, and is intimately familiar with conditions there.

Mr. Walle earned his engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France, and his Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School.