Board of Directors

KCDI is governed by a voluntary Board of Directors who oversee the finances, approve policies and guide the direction of the organization.

Catherine and the Boddhi tree KCDI

Catherine Louise Geach - Founder and Permanent Board Member

Catherine Louise Geach was born in England and began playing the violin at the age of 4, performing her first concert a year later. When she was 15 she won a scholarship to study violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Between July and September of 1990, she went to Cambodia at the age of 18, in order to compile a report on the violation of human rights by the Khmer Rouge and the devastating effect this was having on the civilian population of Cambodia.
The “Aid and War Report” was sent to the UN, British Government and organisations concerned with peace and development. The report highlighted the suffering of people in Khmer Rouge zones and showed why the international community should not be supporting the Khmer Rouge, as well as the negative effect the International Aid and Trade embargo had on Cambodia. For the “Aid and War Report”, she was awarded the Bernard Brett Peace Bequest in 1991.

During her research in Cambodia in 1990, she performed a concert for the Royal University of Fine Arts and was asked by the Dean of the Music Faculty to return to the University to help teach.
From 1990 -1991 she studied Khmer as a private student at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies in London.)

Graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in 1991, she returned to Cambodia in the same year, first as a violin teacher at the University of Fine Arts, but later working on a project for the Conservation and Support of Traditional Music and Cambodian music students at the University.
She learned traditional Mohori music with the Tro Sau instrument and along with her fellow Cambodian professors volunteered to teach Cambodian music as therapy to soldiers mutilated by the war at the Khean Khlang rehabilitation centre. She edited the UNESCO book on “Musical Instruments of Cambodia” which is currently used at SOAS, She wrote articles for the Tablet Magazine about the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields and her experience in the Kompong Chhnang and Kompong Speu hospitals with civilians maimed by mines and rocket fire. She also did research on the Kreung and Tampuan ethnic minorities and their music in Ratankiri Province, she wrote an article for the Tablet about them and presented her research at the European Seminar of Ethnomusicology in 1992.

She was a United Nations Election Observer in Ratanakiri Province for Cambodia’s first democratic elections in 1993.

In 1993 Catherine established the “Khmer Cultural Development Institute”, a Cambodian NGO, which was ratified at the Supreme National Council in the same year. She then founded and oversaw the building of “The Kampot Traditional Music School for Orphaned and Disabled Children” in 1994. The school was built during the civil war and hostage crisis. In August 1994 the school began accepting vulnerable children. Catherine lived in Kampot and worked as a volunteer as the school’s director until 2005. Today she is on the Board of Directors as a permanent board member and takes a very active role for her school, fundraising and helping coordinate Childcare and Cultural Programs. She regularly stays at the Kampot Traditional Music School to assist her colleagues. She also set up a music and art therapy project in Mesa Selimovic Primary school in Sarajevo, Bosnia, between 1996-1998 and travelled from Cambodia to Bosnia twice yearly.

She lives in Italy with her son. She is a professional violinist and soprano and gives concerts in Italy and abroad. In 1999 she was given the Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award in New York, and has been subject of various documentaries and interviews, including the BBC, ABC, Sunday Telegraph Magazine, South African Radio, VOA (Voice of America in Khmer language) and the Readers Digest.

Peter Carey

Dr Peter Carey - Chair

Dr Peter Carey was born in Rangoon, Burma to British parents. He was educated in the UK and graduated from Trinity College, Oxford with first class honours in modern history. He then went on to study Southeast Asian studies at Cornell University in the USA.
He was Laithwaite Fellow in Modern History at Trinity College , Oxford , from 1979 to 2008 and University Lecturer in History – specialising on the history of Southeast Asia.

Dr Carey was a member of the OXFAM Asia Committee from 1986-1991. During that time he also co-founded the Cambodia Trust, which became a leading UK charity for the disabled. The Cambodia Trust (post-2014, Exceed) was a world leader in international training for orthotics and prosthetics training. He was a member of the Cambodia Trust’s Board of Trustees from 1989 to 2008, serving as Chair from 1990 to 1996. He helped oversee the setting up of the Cambodia Trust in Cambodia from 1990 onwards and pioneered the organization’s presence in East Timor in 2003-5 , establishing ASSERT (Association of the Raising up of the Disabled Timor) and the National Centre for Physical Rehabilitation in the capital , Dili.

He resigned from the Board in August 2008 to take up the position as Country Director of the Cambodia Trust in Indonesia (2008-11), subsequently serving as Research and Development Director (2011-12).
He is currently Adjunct Professor in History at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Indonesia , Jakarta and Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College, Oxford , UK.

He has published widely on the history and politics of Indonesia , and has also written on East Timor and Burma ( Myanmar ). In June 2010, he was awarded an MBE in Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday honours list for services to the disabled of Southeast Asia and the following year received the Prix du Jury Award for Individual Philanthropy from the Bank BNP-Paribas.

Mrs. Tong Sam An - Cultural Advisor

Is a very well known Cambodian ballet dancer, daughter of the legendary Madame Em Teay.
Sam An graduated from the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh as a ballerina. Surviving the Khmer Rouge regime, she helped with the revival of the arts after their near destruction and was one of the principal artists to reconstruct the ballet department after 1980.
She has had a successful career as both dancer and teacher, often performing abroad on tour and within Cambodia in the Royal Palace and National Theatre.
Today she teaches classical ballet and is the vice-director of the Performing Arts Section of the National Theatre in Phnom Penh.

Mao Chhuon

Mr. Mao Chhuon - Board Treasurer

Mr. Mao CHHUON was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He holds a bachelor of Accounting and a Bachelor of Fisheries. He has extensive experience for more than 19 years in the field of Finance, Accounting, Administration and Procurement. He has local and international experience. He has worked for the Mekong River Commission Secretariat (MRCS) based in Bangkok and the United Nation Development Program (UNDP) based in Jakarta. In Cambodia, he has worked for various donor financed-project such as The World Bank, and Asian Development Bank.

Juanita Rice

Judge Juanita Rice - Board Member

Juanita Rice served in the Colorado Judicial Department from 1987 through 2009 when she retired. She was appointed by the Colorado Governor as a District Court Judge in April of 2000 and was Presiding Domestic Trial Judge for the Eighteenth Judicial District (Arapahoe, Douglas, and Elbert Counties) from 2001 through January, 2009. Prior to this she served as a District Court Magistrate in Arapahoe, Douglas and El Paso Counties. Additionally, she lived and worked in rural Cambodia as a Senior Legal Advisor from 1995 to 1997, with the Cambodian Court Training Project funded by USAID. Judge Rice also has served as the inaugural President of the American University of Phnom Penh and worked with the World Bank Demand for Good Governance Project in Cambodia.

Judge Rice earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree at the University of Minnesota in 1979 and her Juris Doctorate from the University of Colorado School of Law in 1981. After completing law school and before joining the District Court bench, she worked as a trial lawyer in Colorado Springs with an emphasis on family law issues.

For more than 35 years Judge Rice dedicated her professional career efforts primarily to family and juvenile law cases. She has regularly been invited to provide presentations to professionals in the field as well as citizens at large throughout Colorado, on juvenile and domestic law topics including the positive effects of mediation on the divorce process. Her own continuing education includes certificates in conflict management and alternative dispute resolution and most recently 45 hours of high conflict mediation training.

During the course of her legal career, Judge Rice has received recognition for her service to the legal community and the community at large in the form of awards from the Universities of Minnesota and Colorado as well as the El Paso and Arapahoe County Bar Associations, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), the Girl Scouts of America and Children's Advocates. She was honored as the Colorado State Judicial Officer of the Year in Child Support Enforcement. Judge Rice remains a life member of Girl Scouts USA and has served as a Cadette troop leader and motivational speaker for the Wagon Wheel Council of Girl Scouts.

Stephen Davis KCDI

Stephen Davis - Board Member

Stephen Davis retired in June, 2023 concluding 18 years of working as a Trade Commissioner for the Consulate General of Canada located in Denver Colorado. Stephen, along with his colleagues at the Consulate, were responsible for Canada – U.S. trade relations in the states of Colorado, Utah, Montana, Wyoming and Kansas.

Stephen joined the Consulate in March of 2005. Prior to that time, he held international trade positions in several U.S. corporations. This work afforded Stephen the opportunity to travel extensively throughout Asia and to specialize in managing trade relationships with manufacturers of raw materials and finished goods worldwide.

Stephen earned a Bachelor of Science in Religion and Philosophy from Texas Wesleyan University, in Fort Worth, Texas and a Master of Science in International Business from the University of Colorado, in Denver, Colorado.

Stephen’s interest in Asia in general, and specifically Cambodia, began over 30 years ago and led to the 16 months he spent living in rural Cambodia, while volunteering with the International Human Rights Law Group.

In addition to the Khmer Cultural Development Institute, Stephen is a member of the University of Colorado Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) advisory council. Stephen’s previous affiliations include serving on the Peace Notes Board of Directors, the American University of Phnom Penh President’s advisory board and the Cambodian focused Children’s Future International’s Board of Directors. He enjoys traveling, reading a variety of books and spending time outdoors in Colorado. Stephen has hiked Mt. Fuji in Japan five times.

List of our Staff

Mr. Nguon Sothy, Education Adviser

Mr. Nguon Sothy, Director of KCDI

Mr Nguon Sothy attended Teaching College and began his profession as a young teacher in the early 1980s after the end of the Khmer Rouge regime.

He gradually worked his way up to the top of his profession, becoming deputy head of the local Kampot lyceum and then head of the Di Pok primary and middle school. He is also a member of the local Department of Education. He has consistently done teacher training courses to perfect his skills. These courses in both Cambodia and abroad, have been provided by the Cambodian government and International NGOs concerned with education.

Sothy is also a member of the Cambodian Red Cross and has years-long training in first-aid, hygiene measures, fire safety, disease control etc;

Sothy began working at KCDI as an English professor in the mid 1990s when KCDI students still had school lessons inside KCDI. Later in around 2011, students went outside to state school for their academic curriculum. In 2013 Mr Sothy was appointed deputy director of KCDI and then became director of KCDI in 2018.

Since 2019 Sothy along with other KCDI staff members, has done extensive training with NGO partners such as M’lop Tapang and Friends International as well as APLE, on Child Protection. Mr Sothy and KCDI staff assist with evaluation of vulnerable children cases and partnering with other local NGOs such as Epic Arts and the local authorities. There is now a Childsafe Program now running in Kampot. Mr Sothy also coordinates and liaises with the founder of KCDI Ms Geach for specific Childsafe cases. For further information on Childsafe at KCDI and in Kampot, please see our Programs Section.

Mr Sothy is a very well known, loved and respected member of the Kampot community and is well known for his generosity, honesty, good sense and good organisational skills.

“I like working for KCDI as I used to work with both education and cultural arts as well as with orphans for many years.”

Mr. Ros Samouen, Mahoir teacher

Master Ros Samoeun, Mohori Music

Loak Kru Master Ros Samoeun has been teaching at KCDI since 1997. He is also a teaching member of the Royal University of Fine Arts.

He survived a Khmer Rouge prison camp during the genocide and so we are extremely fortunate to have him with us.

Master Samoeun is the head teacher of the KCDI Arts Department. He teaches both resident and outreach children Mohori and Plein Ka music, which includes all the instruments in the Prokom (ensemble) and singing as well.

He also teaches KCDI students how to make traditional leather shadow puppets and perform them (Lakoun Sabaik Touch).

Since 2019, Master Samouen has also done extensive training on Child Protection and Children’s Rights with Friends International, M’lop Tapang and APLE. Master Samouen works in coordination with the director of KCDI Mr Nguon Sothy and other staff regarding the Childsafe Program in Kampot.

“I wish to transfer my knowledge and skills to the younger generations, so that through them they can continue preserving Traditional Khmer Arts and become professional artists.”
Master Loak Kru Khoeun Bèm - Yike

Master Loak Kru Khoeun Bèm, Yike teacher

Master Khoeun Bèm is a very well-known artist of the ancient, rare and endangered Kampot Yike art- form. He is from Chhouk District in Kampot.

He has been teaching at KCDI since 2007. Master Bèm also teaches the art of shadow puppet making and performance alongside Master Ros Samoeun.

“My life is about working with the arts, so I am very happy to be teaching here.”
Master Prum Savorn

Master Prum Savorn, Yike teacher

Mrs. Prum Savorn is a Yike master who has been teaching at KCDI since 2007. She has an incredibly powerful and beautiful voice and was recorded by the students of Sibelius Academy in 2013.

”I am in love with Yike and the children and I want them to take my roles to their future performing.”

Uon Sambo

Mr. Uon Sambo, Pin Peat teacher

Mr. Uon Sambo has been teaching Pin Peat at KCDI since 2008. He grew up at KCDI and studied at the Royal University of Fine Arts.

”I like working with children as well as preserving and develop Khmer Cultural arts.”

Master Tong Kim An

Master Tong Kim An, Classical Dance Teacher

Studied dance at the Royal Palace with her Majesty Queen Kossimak before the war and the Khmer Rouge genocide. Her mother Master Loak Yeay Em Theay is considered one of the last National Treasures of Classical Cambodian Dance still alive.

Master Kim An helped revive traditional dance after the devastation of the Khmer Rouge regime decimated ninety percent of artists. Working in the National Theatre and the Royal Ballet, Master Kim An helped piece together the different movements and dances of both male, female and Yik (ogre) roles together with other surviving artists. It is a great honour for our school to have her teach our students.

Master Loak Yeay Em Theay (her mother) also visits our school to give masterclasses. Both can be seen here assisting one of our students at KCDI with the movements of the male role.

“I feel compassion for our children and I love the school and so wish to help by teaching”
Master Vy Lyda

Master Vy Lyda, Folk Dance Teacher

Vy Lyda studied as a little girl at KCDI having lost her parents. She graduated as a Mohori music scholar and Folk Dance Specialist.

Today she has formed her own Dance and Music Troupe with her brother Ngèth, also a former student at our school. Master Vy Lyda teaches Folk Dance at our school and is a very important role-model for other students, especially girls.