The People Behind MGRA
A rare combination of regulated discipline and emerging-market execution.
Natosha "Tosha" Wallace
Founder & Principal, Risk and Governance, United States, Uganda and Africa
MGRA is led by Natosha (Tosha) Wallace, MBA, an independent advisor with 24 years of enterprise risk and regulatory governance experience inside global banking and ten years building and governing agricultural infrastructure in East Africa.
Tosha has built, validated, and governed risk, regulatory, and business continuity programs across U.S. and global financial institutions, work tied to more than half a billion dollars in enforcement actions and ranging from issue management framework design to enterprise risk and control architecture. That includes seven years as Vice President of Enterprise Risk at MUFG Union Bank, where she led remediation across 16 business lines and served as strategic liaison to the Tokyo Head Office, and her current engagement with RSM as an Audit and Risk Validation Consultant supporting Bank of America's regulatory consent orders covering Prepaid Card and BSA/AML programs.
She has been working in Uganda since 2016, first as a missionary and in support of another organization, and founded The Boon Project, Agriculture with a Purpose in 2019 alongside Global Industrial Hemp Solutions, a paired nonprofit and for-profit platform building agricultural economies communities can own. That work has produced government approvals in three countries, a 3,000-farmer cooperative, and a multi-entity operating structure across four jurisdictions. It is not a side project. It is where the governance, blended finance, and due diligence questions family offices, impact funds, and DFIs are asking get answered in practice rather than in theory.
Institutional governance discipline and lived emerging-market execution rarely sit in the same person. That combination is what MGRA brings to every engagement.
Catherine Smith
NGO & Development Consultant, Uganda and Africa
Catherine Smith brings thirteen years of nonprofit operations and community development work across Ugandan and developing-nation contexts, the last seven based in Uganda.
She founded Whispers of Love and served as its Executive Director, leading operational and administrative oversight for a nonprofit serving vulnerable children and underserved communities, and working alongside local leaders, Ministry of Gender representatives, and District Senior Probation Officers on alternative care initiatives. She has since transitioned the organization to local leadership, where it continues to operate.
Her consulting practice supports NGOs, faith-based organizations, agriculture initiatives, and donor-funded programs, covering stakeholder engagement, local partnership development, program coordination, donor and volunteer management, and safeguarding. She has supported women's empowerment and livelihood initiatives including mushroom cultivation, community gardening, and food security programs in rural communities.
For MGRA, Catherine anchors the nonprofit and development side of the practice: NGO operations and governance, donor accountability, community and stakeholder engagement, and the local government relationships that determine whether a program holds its footing on the ground.
Joan Esther Akoth
Operations and Communications Coordinator, Uganda
Joan “Jojo” Akoth brings several years of operations and ministry administration experience in Uganda, with deep roots in the communities where MGRA’s clients work.
Before joining MGRA, she served for several years with one of Uganda’s largest churches, a ministry operating 19 campuses across the country, where she helped run operations for one of its campuses. Her work there included coordinating staff and volunteers, managing schedules and logistics, supporting programs and outreach, and keeping the practical side of a large, multi-site organization running smoothly. That experience gave her a working understanding of how faith-based organizations operate in Uganda, and of the systems, accountability, and day-to-day discipline that sustain them.
As Operations and Community Coordinator, Jojo manages field logistics and outreach planning, coordinates community visits, and serves as a primary point of contact with local leaders and the families and groups that programs are meant to serve. She also leads on-the-ground documentation, capturing photographs and firsthand records from community visits so that partners and donors see an accurate, dignified picture of the work rather than stock or staged imagery.
For MGRA, Jojo anchors the field operations side of the practice: making sure engagements are grounded in real relationships, that site visits and community engagement are well organized and culturally sound, and that what clients hear about a program matches what is actually happening on the ground.