Jen Ramaekers

I graduated in 2003 with my Doctor of Pharmacy and practiced pharmacy for about 20 years before officially retiring in October 2023. In 2024, I started our nonprofit organization after my family and I traveled to Uganda in 2015 to adopt our two youngest children. We fell in love with the people there and maintained close ties with Uganda over the years. When the mission organization we had been working with fell apart in 2022-2023, my heart was still in Uganda and the dream they had, so we decided to take up the reins and do it on our own. Our nonprofit is focused on providing a place of refuge for people in northern Uganda whose lives were destroyed by Joseph Kony. We purchased 100 acres of land in 2024 and are developing a self-sustaining village with schools, medical clinics, and housing. I work closely with our in-country director Filda, who is also a woman and fosters six children herself. She runs everything on the ground in Uganda, from contractors to agricultural planning. Our goal is that everyone in the U.S. who works with the nonprofit is unpaid so we can send every dollar we can over to Uganda for projects. I'm married to a wonderful oncologist and have six children, four of whom are still at home, so I balance my nonprofit work with my mom duties.