Mariam Sarrafan, Program Coordinator, Mentors & Mentorship Resources
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” – Rumi (Persian poet)
Mariam joined Infinite Family in 2008 as a Video Mentor with her Net Buddy son, Sibusiso. Over the years, Sibu became part of Mariam’s family, with constant communication discussing Sibu’s goals and plans for his future, and how he can achieve them.
Two years ago, Mariam joined Infinite Family’s staff because she knows firsthand what 30 minutes a week, actively advocating and committing to the most vulnerable children in South Africa, can achieve. She has personally seen how Sibu has grown from a shy, temperamental, “unfocused” (as he puts it) youngster into a responsible, mature, and caring young man. Now he is the one who mentors others.
In her role, Mariam identifies and trains all individuals interested in becoming Video Mentors with Infinite Family. She supports new Video Mentors through the onboarding process until they are connected with their Net Buddy mentees.
Mariam’s goal is to see more and more (and more) teens matched with mentors all over the world. Mentors who guide them to build self-confidence, encourage them to think about and plan their future and show them that they are cared for and that they matter. Mariam hopes to see these teens turn their dreams into reality, growing into the best version of themselves and becoming leaders in their communities.
Mariam credits her cultural upbringing for fostering her passion for giving back and caring. She grew up in Europe and the Middle East, and has lived in the U.S. and Southeast Asia, raising her children to appreciate all the world has to offer. Mariam has volunteered her time for multiple causes, including caring for abused toddlers, fundraising for public schools, as well as building schools and bringing education to Cambodian children.
Mariam graduated from Purdue University with a Master’s degree in Education, a Bachelor of Arts in French Language & Literature, and a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Environmental Design. Mariam lives with her husband in New York City. Her children are spread across the world — her daughter is in Baton Rouge, her oldest son in San Francisco, and of course Sibu in SA!
“It’s your road, and yours alone – others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.” – Rumi
Elsina Mmaphori Bokaba
Secretary, Infinite Family International and Infinite Family NPC
Elsina Mmaphori Bokaba was an Infinite Family Net Buddy for three and a half years, from 2009-2012 and is now a Net Blazer, blazing her way as a first-generation member of South Africa’s formal workforce. She grew up in Alexandra Township and attended Alexandra High School. She is the only family member, including her mother and sister, to complete high school, which she did with a Bachelor’s matric qualification. Ms. Bokaba became certified as a Cathodic Protection Technician (“CPT”) during a two-year internship at Isinyithi and then was hired as their first female CPT. She obtained her National Diploma in Electrical Engineering in March 2024. Today, she travels Africa-wide to evaluate industrial and infrastructure components, including storage vats, bridges, pipelines and ships, affected by moisture and other sources of degradation. Since joining Isinyithi, Ms. Bokaba has built her mother a house, bought a car, and purchased her first home. Ms Bokaba currently lives with her husband in Riverside, Johannesburg.
Katleho Lebata
Infinite Family International and Infinite Family NPC
Katleho Lebata is a senior investment risk professional with a MSc in Global Finance (Fordham University), a BSc in Actuarial Science(University of Pretoria), and 19 years of expertise leading investment risk management initiatives across diverse financial landscapes. He has a deep understanding of developmental investments, financial analysis, regulatory compliance, and strategic planning within the investment sector. He served as Senior Manager for Public Investment Corporation (PIC) the largest Fund Manager in Africa. In that role, he supported billions of US dollars in investments into small to large matured business firms to drive the Funds’ expansion into new territories such as the rest of SADC and Sub-Saharan Africa at large. Earlier in his career, he also worked in finance for various international and local companies such as Nestle, SABMiller, ABSA, and First National Bank. Prior to serving as a board member of Infinite Family, Mr. Lebata was the Executive Manager of The Association of Black Securities and Investment Professionals (ABSIP) and later served on the Board of ABSIP as an Executive for Young Professionals. Mr. Lebata splits his time between Pretoria and the Eastern Cape. In his spare time, he is a livestock farmer specialising in cattle and sheep. He is also interested in logistics with a focus on passenger and scholar transportation.
Rachel Lovett
Secretary, Infinite Family International and Infinite Family NPC
Rachel Lovett was an Infinite Family Video Mentor from 2010 to 2019. Ms. Lovett is an organizational development, strategic communications and fundraising consultant working with non-profit and for-profit companies in the United States and Ghana. Previously, she served as the Interim Executive Director of Thriving in Place and the Managing Director of War Child USA. War Child is a global non-profit that works with war-affected communities to help children and their families via access to education, economic opportunity, and justice. Rachel also managed the $64.5M capital campaign for Theatre for a New Audience to build its first home in the Downtown Brooklyn Cultural District. She is also on the Board of Clinton Housing & Development Company and the Advisory Board of Harlem School of the Arts. Rachel holds Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a Master of Public Administration from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She lives in San Francisco, California, Goshen, New Hampshire and Lisbon, Portugal.
Palesa Makobe
Chair, Infinite Family International and Infinite Family NPC
Palesa Makobe is a Director/Partner at EY who serves as the Africa FAAS Leader and Southern African Cluster leader. Her work in FAAS covers a wide range of accounting and reporting, transaction accounting, treasury, and sustainability services. Prior to joining EY, she was Senior Manager – Finance and Change Management with Old Mutual Corporate, Partner/Director at Deloitte (South Africa) and filled several roles at KPMG, including Head of Global Mobility, Africa. Ms. Makobe completed her Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Witwatersrand and her Honours in Accountancy at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. She completed an Advanced Certificate in Emerging Markets and Country Risk Analysis at Fordham University, a Master of Business Administration at Columbia Business School and London Business School, and an Executive development programme at Duke University. She lives in Johannesburg.
Andre Nel
Chair, Infinite Family International and Infinite Family NPC
Andre Nel is a passionate entrepreneur and social impact advocate, owning two successful businesses in the Western Cape, South Africa: Clean My Bed Atlantic Seaboard and Tutor Doctor Cape Town North. Before establishing his own ventures, Andre served as General Manager of Sustainable Development at Pick n Pay and later as Foods Programme Manager at Woolworths. His long-standing commitment to youth empowerment is exemplified by his involvement with Infinite Family since 2018, a partnership he initiated as the General Manager: Sustainable Development at Pick n Pay. He holds an Honors Degree in Psychology from the University of Stellenbosch, an MBA from Stellenbosch Business School, and a Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Business from Cambridge University. Andre resides in Cape Town with his partner and their two young children.
Joseph Sacca
Chair, Infinite Family International and Infinite Family NPC
Joseph Sacca is a Partner at Baker & Hostetler LLP specializing in securities and commercial litigation. Previously, he was a Partner with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. Prior to joining Skadden Arps, Mr. Sacca was law clerk to Judge Clarence C. Newcomer of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Mr. Sacca serves on the Federal Bar Council Public Service Committee, which is dedicated to providing legal representation to those otherwise unable to afford it and to providing non-legal public service in a variety of areas. He received a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from the Temple University School of Law, where he served as the managing editor of the Temple Law Review. Mr. Sacca lives in Asheville with his wife and their two children.
Amy Conrad Stokes
Founder and CEO, Infinite Family International and Infinite Family NPC
Amy Conrad Stokes has spent more than 35 years working in all areas of business planning, start-up and ongoing management. Following the adoption of her son, Calder Qhawe, from South Africa in 2003, Ms. Stokes was inspired to develop an Internet platform using video technology to enable face-to-face distance mentoring. After two years of research, development and team building, she launched Infinite Family in 2006. Ms. Stokes began employing and mentoring at-risk teens while working at Chicago’s Shorebank Corporation in 1996. While at Shorebank, she created and ran a division called Studio Air, a business that employed teens from Chicago’s gang influenced South Shore neighborhoods. It was here that she learned the power of mentoring in the life of a teen with few positive role models or economic choices. Ms. Stokes started her professional career as part of Andersen’s Consulting Strategic Services team in Chicago, then San Francisco. She graduated from Kalamazoo College magna cum laude with a B.A. degree in economics (Honors) and French and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Ms. Stokes and her husband live in New York with two of their three children.
Booi Themeli, PhD
Infinite Family International and Infinite Family NPC
Dr. Booi Themeli is the Director of the Fordham University Ubuntu Academic Service Learning Program. In addition, Dr. Themeli is a Professor of Economics at Fordham University, teaching courses in African Economic Development, Law and Economics, Business Statistics, Ethics and Economics, Corporate Social Responsibility and Poverty Alleviation, Project Monitoring and Evaluation (Ateneo University, Philippines), and Economics of Emerging Markets (University of Pretoria, South Africa). He also serves as the coordinator of the collaboration agreement between Fordham University and the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Under this collaboration agreement, Dr. Themeli coordinates and leads various student and faculty exchange and study abroad programs between the two universities, both at undergraduate and graduate levels. He received his MA (Economics) from Western Illinois University (USA), M Com from Rhodes University (South Africa); and PhD from Fordham University. During his studies, Dr. Themeli was the recipient of the prestigious Fulbright and Rockefeller Fellowships. Prior to Fordham, he taught at both the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and at Rhodes University (South Africa). His research focuses on Public Enterprise Restructuring, Privatization, Public Policy Issues, Labor Markets, Ethics, and Impact Investing as well as African Economic Development. Over the years, Dr. Themeli has been a consultant at non-governmental organizations and private sector institutions in Africa and the United States. His primary residence is currently in New York but his family home remains in Ngwenani, South Africa. Dr. Themeli travels to South Africa an average of eight times each year.
Kevin Travis
Treasurer, Infinite Family International
Kevin Travis is an Executive Vice-President at Curinos, where he is a senior client officer, advising large banks in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada on issues of expansion and revenue growth, including new market entry, new distribution strategies, network optimization, and customer segmentation. Prior to joining Curinos, Mr. Travis lived and worked in Johannesburg, South Africa as a Resident Vice-President at Citibank. From 1996 to 2000, he was part of the team responsible for growing Citibank’s new office from 40 to 400 employees across multiple business lines. In his role, he became very familiar with the political, economic, and social issues facing South Africa, and more broadly Southern and Eastern Africa. He has traveled widely in Africa and is a frequent visitor to the continent. He also co-founded a digital financial aggregator in 2000 where he served as Chief Strategy Officer. Kevin is an early-phase investor and board member at Energicity Corp, the largest solar mini-grid utility in West Africa. Kevin holds a BA in History and French from Tufts University and attended the College of Law in London. He lives in Vermont, where he recently bought and renovated an old inn and is turning it into the best small wedding venue in New England.
Amy Conrad Stokes, Founder and CEO,
Infinite Family and Infinite Family, South Africa
Amy is a 2011 CNN Top Ten Hero
“If the relationship is the motivation for attracting a child to a caring adult, then it’s also the inspiration for getting that child to invest in themselves, to learn the skills to do whatever they need to create their own opportunities in the future.”
When Infinite Family’s Founder and CEO, Amy Stokes, traveled to South Africa to meet her son in 2003, her thoughts were about his future and the joy of adding to her own family through adoption. She and her husband, Chris, always planned a family enriched by adoption, and selected South Africa because of the overwhelming number of children there orphaned by AIDS. During the journey, Amy experienced first-hand the devastation of HIV/AIDS on families, communities and the traditional extended-family way of life.
Seeing all of the unattended young children, she wondered at the absence of young adults compared to number of teens, children and babies. “I wondered what life would be like for these children – what the future would hold for them. Any one of them could have been my own son. I thought ‘If very few of the adults you care about has lived past 35, then why would you think you can? Why would you stay in school; why would you learn skills you might need later on, especially when you can’t imagine later on?’ With so many children and so few adults to help them grow up, I knew we had to find a way to bring new information, resources and the caring, nurturing effect of other adults into their lives.”
That way became Infinite Family, a video mentoring program that harnesses the untapped resource of adults worldwide to mentor pre-teens and teens over the Internet. Founded by Amy in 2006, Infinite Family has built and operated computer labs at partner organization sites in rural and urban areas in South Africa. In addition to providing mentors for children, the interactive Ezomndeni Net mentoring platform created by Infinite Family helps them develop critical language and technology skills, while working with mentors on the program’s five core skill areas towards self-reliance.
More than 600 teens and pre-teens have already benefitted from Infinite Family’s video mentoring program, but Amy says, “We’re really just getting started. Our growth over the next few years will more than double the number of kids we can serve.”
Amy has spent more than 20 years working in all areas of business planning, start-up and ongoing management. She started her professional career as part of Andersen’s Consulting Strategic Services team in Chicago, then San Francisco. She learned the power of mentoring from teens at Studio Air, the youth venture she started as a subsidiary of Shorebank Corporation. Since founding Infinite Family, Amy has committed her career to extending the organization’s powerful video mentoring relationships to children anywhere who need an additional caring adult in their lives to build the confidence, skills and global perspective that promote success.
Amy was graduated from Kalamazoo College magna cum laude with a B.A. degree in economics (Honors) and French and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She and her husband live in New York with their three children.
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Sanele Buthelezi, Mentoring Support Specialist, South Africa
“Because of all I learned through Infinite Family’s mentoring program, I see myself as a proud young man of South Africa with my whole life ahead of me.”
Sanele Buthelezi describes his role as Mentoring Support Specialist with Infinite Family as “coming full circle” in his life. As one of Infinite Family’s pioneer Net Buddies, Sanele brings valued first-hand experience with video mentoring and its impact on youth achievement to his work every day. His understanding of technology and familiarity with Infinite Family’s video mentoring platform help ensure that mentors and Net Buddies are able to make the most out of their weekly video conversations together.
A young entrepreneur and self-proclaimed “ideas guy”, Sanele’s motivation to do well in life goes hand-in-hand with a commitment to be of service to others. He credits his video mentor with helping build the bridge of hopes and dreams in his life, and for teaching him the importance of hard work to making them a reality. Along with facilitating the mentor-Net Buddy experience as a Mentor Support Specialist, Sanele is passionate about using social media to communicate the issues affecting young adults in South Africa today, and to engaging Infinite Family and its audience in the dialogue. He’s inspired by the youth in Infinite Family’s program and is happiest just hanging out with them on a Saturday afternoon.
Sanele is a graduate of United Church School and has studied marketing at the Institution of Marketing Management. An avid reader of philosophy and outdoorsman, Sanele has participated in fundraising challenges to summit Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Aconcagua Mountain in Argentina.
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