Our Founders
Valentino Achak Deng
Dave Eggers
Co-Founder of the VAD Foundation
Author of What Is the What
Dave Eggers is the author of several books, including You Shall Know Our Velocity, winner of the Independent Book Award, and What Is the What, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of France's Prix Medici. That book, about Valentino Achak Deng, a survivor of the civil war in South Sudan, gave birth to the VAD Foundation.
Eggers is also the founder and editor of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house in San Francisco, as well as 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for youth in the Mission District of San Francisco established in 2002. Local communities have since opened sister 826 centers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Ann Arbor, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Boston. In 2004, Eggers taught at the University of California–Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and there, with Dr. Lola Vollen, he co-founded another cause, Voice of Witness, a series of books using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world.
A native of Chicago, Eggers graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in journalism. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.
Co-Founder of the VAD Foundation
Subject of What Is the What
Valentino Achak Deng co-founded The VAD Foundation in 2006 and leads the formulation and implementation of the organization’s programs. He is an experienced developer with a proven record of driving positive change throughout South Sudan and globally. Valentino has a BA in Education in History and Business and an MBA in Global Business Management from the United States International University.
A premier member of the African diaspora, Deng advocates on issues such as access to universal education, transformational infrastructure, and entrepreneurship as key catalysts for sustainable development and economic growth. He has served in various capacities as a community social worker, peer counselor, and reproductive health motivator. He was previously a Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility for the large-scale African energy and infrastructure project developer, Black Rhino Group.
Mr. Deng also has a passion for crops and livestock farming as well as food processing. He is married to Julia Abuk with whom they are blessed with four children; two girls and two boys.