"I believe Africa will become the fulcrum of world mission in the twenty-first century," says AE Founder Michael Cassidy.

As such, AE is a global partnership that believes in a bright future for Africa under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Our aim is to proclaim the Gospel to the residents of the major cities of Africa, making a special effort to reach the leadership of the continent, since godly governance can result in major transformations of whole countries.

Our mission – To Evangelize the Cities of Africa Through Word and Deed in Partnership With the Church – is carried out by Africans themselves, who already understand their local cultures and speak their fellow citizens' languages. We reach out to Africa in four ways:

• Evangelism – preaching the Good News of the Gospel via citywide missions
• Reconciliation – ministering healing to those who have experienced the trauma of war and violence and teaching people who have experienced conflict to reconcile and work together for their common good
• Community Development – teaching the poor practical skills through which they can earn a living and equipping them to run their own business and teach others how to develop economic self-sufficiency
• Leadership Training – equipping pastors and laypeople to think biblically and live out their faith in their place of work and influence.

Curtis May is Director of the Office of Reconciliation Ministries for Grace Communion International (formerly the Worldwide Church of God) and a Ministry Development Trainer for church leaders.  He is also a former Grace Communion pastor and district superintendent and a current elder and member of the church’s Board of Directors. He and his wife, Jannice, have served in full-time pastoral ministry for 38 years in Baltimore, Maryland; Washington, D.C; Richmond and Norfolk Virginia; and in Los Angeles and Pasadena, California. He received his pastoral credentials through the then Worldwide Church of God through service and studies at Ambassador College, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Regent College and the Biblical Research Institute. He is also certified in Mediation and Facilitation through UCLA and the Western Justice Center Foundation. The Mays have two married children and live in Banning, California.

Donna Buys has been involved with AE since 1983 when she went to Uganda to work with an international medical tem giving vaccines to children after the fall of Idi Amin’s regime. She earned a B.S. in nursing from the University of Colorado spending most of her career as a medical writer. Her newsletter publishing company, started in 1987, grew to several state editions before she sold it in 1995. She has made numerous trips to Africa to participate in AE missions in Zimbabwe, Ghana, Malawi and Rwanda. She grew up in Austin, Minnesota, and now lives in Cardiff by the Sea, California, in the summer, where she enjoys tennis, bridge and boogie boarding, and in Deer Valley, Utah, in the winter, where she likes to ski.

Chris Byron

Chris Byron was born and raised in South Africa and first encountered African Enterprise as a university student attending the Mission to Pietermaritzburg in 1975. Chris and his wife Pauline moved to the United States 1986 and he joined the U.S board of African Enterprise in 1995. Chris and Pauline have three children and live in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Chris is employed as a member of the finance group of a software company. He partners with other ministries in North Carolina to reach the needy, sick and hungry in the third world with practical help and the Gospel.

David Carpenter is Pastor/Head of Staff at Brentwood Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. He graduated from Eastern College in Philadelphia and obtained his Master of Divinity at Princeton Theological Seminary. During seminary, he was involved in Young Life and spent a year in South Africa during the time when apartheid laws were being dismantled, working with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African Council of Churches and a host of reconciliation ministries. After marrying, he and his wife Yvette took a 16-month honeymoon to 45 countries, meeting with churches and mission organizations. Dave and Yvette have one daughter and live in Los Angeles, California.

Michael Cassidy

Michael Cassidy is the Founder of African Enterprise and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African Enterprise Leadership Training Center in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. He was born in Johannesburg, grew up in Lesotho and received a Master in Modern and Medieval Languages from Cambridge University in England and a Bachelor of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary in California. Cassidy launched AE in 1962 with the assistance of four seminary friends via an evangelistic mission to Pietermaritzburg. He has since become a significant Christian leader in South Africa and across the African continent, leading hundreds of evangelistic mission and calling Christians together via the South African Congress on Mission and Evangelism in 1972, the Pan African Christian Leadership Assembly in 1976 and 1994, the South African Christian Leadership Assembly in 1979 and 2003, the National Initiative for Reconciliation in 1985 and the National Initiative for the Reformation of South Africa in 2008. Cassidy and his wife Carol have three children and seven grandchildren and live in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.  >>Find out more about Michael Cassidy

Leif Gjestland

Leif Gjestland was born in Swaziland to missionary parents. His African missionary heritage stretches back to the 1850s, when his great-grandparents and then grandparents served the Zulu people under a Norwegian Lutheran mission. A fluent Zulu-speaker, Gjestland graduated from Kearsney College in KwaZulu-Natal and then Natal University in South Africa. He completed an MBA at the University of California, Berkeley, and then started his own software company, which offered products able to capture and tabulate survey data, used in many countries by companies such as Gallup. He and his wife Nan live in Atherton, California, and have three grown children and two grandchildren.

Archibald Hart

Archibald Hart grew up in South Africa who and was the chairman of African Enterprise’s first-ever evangelistic mission to Pietermaritzburg in 1962. A clinical psychologist, board-certified in psychopharmacology, he later moved to the U.S., becoming Dean of the Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary. The author of 28 books and co-founder of Hart Institute, a psychological counseling, training and coaching consultancy in Sierra Madre, California, he specializes in psychotherapy from a Christian orientation and in the treatment of depression, anxiety and stress disorders. His major research interests are in the area of the emotional hazards of the ministry, panic disorder, stress management for leaders, and psychophysiological measures of emotion and spirituality. He is also president of the International Network for Christian Counselling.  He and his wife Kathleen have three grown daughters and seven grandchildren and live in Arcadia, California.

Val Hellikson served for many years as president of the Haven of Rest radio program.

Sharon Hart Morris May

Sharon Hart Morris May grew up in South Africa and came to the U.S. in 1972 where she earned a degree in psychology from UCLA, followed by a Master’s in Christian Leadership and a Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy from the Fuller Theological Seminary Graduate School of Psychology. She is now a licensed marriage and family therapist and director of the Haven of Safety Relationship Center where she specializes in Emotionally Focused Therapy. She has a heart for working with couples, leaders, pastors, missionaries, as well as training counselors and helping people foster close and secure relationships with their Creator and their loved ones. Sharon and her husband Michael live in Arcadia, California, and have four grown sons.

James Morrison

James Morrison grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and graduated from the University of Tennessee before earning a Bachelor of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary and a Master of Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. He was a chaplain in the U.S. Army before serving as associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church of San Diego, executive pastor at Hollywood Presbyterian Church and senior pastor of Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church. He has made 12 visits to Africa, both as past chairman of the AEUSA Board and in a personal capacity. He and his wife, Sarah, have two children and three South Africa-born grandchildren and live in Woodland Hills, California.

John Pentecost

John Pentecost was born in Mexico to parents who were involved with student ministries, which stimulated in him a natural interest in working among young people of other countries. He studied cultural anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, leading to a decade of service with World Vision, including two years in Senegal, in West Africa, as part of a large-scale development team. After returning to the U.S., he began work with a real estate firm which provides housing and commercial leasing in the San Gabriel Valley of California. He has been a long-time member of Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena and currently participates in Providence Mission Homes, which provides 43 furnished apartments for overseas missionaries.

Barbara Spaulding

Barbara Spaulding grew up in Pasadena, California, as the daughter of Bruce and Adaline Bare, Bruce having been the founding member of the African Enterprise Board in 1961 when Michael Cassidy, then a Fuller Seminary student, was put in contact with him by Charles Fuller. She raised two children and then served as Director of Alumni and Parent Relations at Westmont College, her alma mater, in Santa Barbara, California, before buying the Bush Company, a direct mail, list management and brokerage company representing Christian publishers across the U.S., which she still serves as president and owner. She and her husband, Don, have two children and four grandchildren and live in Irvine, California.

Nancy Watson

Nancy Watson is a native Californian who has been a trial lawyer and now serves as an Assistant Chief Trial Counsel for the State Bar of California, the agency responsible for attorney licensing and discipline in the state. She is the Church Council President of Grace Lutheran Church in Culver City, where she lives, and also enjoys working on the church’s Christian Service Committee.