The Board of Directors come from a variety of backgrounds and nationalities. Each has considerable expertise in their own field and they bring their wide range of knowledge and experience to support PIO.
Steve Christov has been actively involved with PIO since early 2003. While working on a 6 month volunteer project for Room to Read in Cambodia, he met Phymean shortly after she began PIO. Initially he assisted her with developing funding proposals, conducting site surveys, and assisting with fundraising, creating marketing materials and website development. Shortly afterwards he resigned from his position as Product Specialist at an international software company and decided to spend two years in Cambodia to help establish PIO. Currently he is working to develop a fundraising arm of PIO in Canada and the US and continues to advise on the sustainable growth of PIO. He holds a Bachelor of Anthropology from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
Frank Carney has run a successful retail women's clothing outlet for the last 30 years in Melbourne, Australia. He always held a deep interest and love for Cambodia and was able to first visit the country in 1994. During one of his business trips to Thailand, Frank met Phymean at the Melbourne Airport in 2004 where she told him about PIO and invited him to visit Phnom Penh to see it for himself. The following week he made the trip to Phnom Penh and was so impressed with all of Phymean's achievements and for her strong vision for the future that he was compelled to offer a modest donation. Over time Frank has become a generous regular supporter of PIO and regularly offers his business experience and wisdom to the operations of PIO.
Dr. Benny Widyono served as a United Nations diplomat in Bangkok, Santiago, New York, and Cambodia from 1963 to 1997 in Cambodia with UNTAC from 1992 to 1993, then returned to Cambodia as the UN Secretary-General's Representative from 1994-1997. His recently published book, Dancing in Shadows: Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge, and the United Nations in Cambodia was written while Dr. Widyono was a visiting scholar at Cornell University. Dr. Widyono held s a PhD in Economics and was most recently a professor of economics at the University of Connecticut. Benny Widyono knew Phymean since 1992 when they worked together in the United Nations Peacekeeping operation, UNTAC in Siemreap in 1992-93. Since the establishment of PIO in 2002, Benny Widyono actively supported Phymean in various capacities in her heroic efforts to built up PIO from scratch.
Evelina is the CEO of the boutique consultancy Lumen Behavior, an educator, journalist, and author. She is a founding board member of the knowledge lab Inter Business Initiative, and has been teaching at Zaman University Cambodia and Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia. Evelina has extensive experience with sustainability reporting and applied research. She was recently lecturing at Ross Business School about the power of empathy and in 2017 she published a book based on interviews with girls and women in Phnom Penh. Over the years, Evelina has conducted research and has been writing about vulnerable children and women in, for example, Sweden, Cambodia, the Gambia, India, Senegal, Kazakhstan, and Zimbabwe. She has been involved with PIO since 2013 and joined the board in 2017.
Richard is a businessman who has been working with Phymean for 10 years. He has manufacturing facilities in China and Malaysia that specialize in custom electrical products.