About Us - Staff - Home


Mike Kendellen
Director for Survey
Takoma Park, MD

Main Responsiblities

As Director for Survey, Mike is responsible for the planning, execution and implementation of the Global Landmine Survey program. This includes monitoring the activities and performances of country survey teams, ensuring that all information provided by the teams is complete and accurate.

In addition, he recruits and hires, in collaboration with the SAC Executive Director, necessary international staff; conducts annual performance reviews of SAC staff under his supervision and makes recommendations to the Executive Director for personnel actions; as well as provides briefings and progress reports to donors and external partners as required.

Background

Mike has over 25 years experience in the fields of relief, development and humanitarian aid. During this time, he designed, prepared, negotiated and implemented relief and rehabilitation activities in shelter, income generation, health, rehabilitation, mine risk education, orthopedic services, education, local NGO development, community services, micro-credit, non-food relief distributions, logistics and water and sanitation.

Specifically, Mike was the country director in Indonesia, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Croatia where he managed an education and training program for 4,000 refugee and asylum seeker students, opened one of the first NGO job training and micro-business projects for refugee returnee in Vietnam, facilitated a multi-million dollar shelter, NGO development, income generation, legal assistance and social services relief and rehabilitation program for refugees, internally displaced persons and returnees in Croatia and assisted IDPs and refugees in Azerbaijan and Tajikistan through shelter, health, education and income generation projects.

He began his career with the U.S. Peace Corps, as a teacher of English as a second language and special education in Venezuela and Morocco between 1974 and 1980. Soon after that he worked for UNHCR and the Malaysian Red Crescent Society as an Education Officer and Teacher Trainer until mid-1983 and then continued managing education programs for refugees in Indonesia through early 1993. From 1994 through early 1999 Mike worked in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans.

From 1999 until June of 2002, Mike was the Program Manager for Vietnam Veteran’s of America Foundation in Washington, D.C., where he was responsible for the daily oversight of rehabilitation and mine awareness programs in Kosovo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Angola and Central America.

Education

Mike, who is married, received his B.A. in Liberal Arts from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in 1973, and in 1984, he received his M.A. in International Administration from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. In 1991 he participated in a Crisis Management Workshop facilitated by UNHCR at the Galang Refugee Camp in Indonesia.