We make fire safety possible, for everyone.

Science. Partnership. Systems Change.

By connecting data with lived experience, we design safer housing, stronger emergency systems, and fairer policies that protect those most exposed to fire risk.

Through large-scale fire experiments, community-based research, and global collaboration, we’re showing that fire safety isn’t just technical – it’s transformative.

Learn more

“The most important thing that Kindling does is bring hope and the idea of an alternative future.”

- Patricia Zweig

Disaster Risk Scholar

- Danielle Antonellis

Kindling Founder & Executive Director

Our team

Kindling is a U.S.-based nonprofit and a registered organization in South Africa. Our interdisciplinary and international team brings together fire engineers, social scientists, development and humanitarian practitioners all working toward one goal: fire safety for all.

Board of Directors

USA Board

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Danielle Antonellis

Founder & Executive Director

Danielle Antonellis

Founder & Executive Director

Danielle is the Founder and Executive Director of Kindling. She is a fire safety engineer with 13 years’ experience working as both a researcher and practitioner on diverse building, infrastructure, and development projects across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Before founding Kindling, Danielle was a Senior Fire Safety Consultant with Arup based in Boston, London, and Hong Kong. She served as an Assistant to Expert Witness Dr Barbara Lane on Phase 1 of the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry and led Arup’s global program on fire safety in informal settlements.

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Jim Kennedy

Chair

Jim Kennedy

Chair

Jim has a PhD in refugee camp design, and more than 15 years field experience in disaster-preparedness, post-disaster shelter and settlements, and camp planning. Jim’s experience in the field has included countries in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. Jim has worked for the United Nations, the Red Cross movement, and a number of international NGOs. Jim has also conducted research into fire safety and shelter for the UK government and is involved in ongoing projects to integrate fire-safety planning with other aspects of safety and protection in camps.

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Jim Quiter

Treasurer

Jim Quiter

Treasurer

Jim is an Executive Fire Life Safety Consultant with AESG and former Managing Principal of Arup’s 300-person Los Angeles office, which generated over $100 million in revenue under his leadership. A recognized global leader in fire protection engineering with 40+ years of experience, he has contributed to numerous landmark projects worldwide. Jim serves on the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Standards Council, is a former Chair of the NFPA Safety to Life Correlating Committee, and is a Fellow and Past President of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE).

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Kathleen Almand

Secretary

Kathleen Almand

Secretary

Kathleen served the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) as Vice President, Research, until her retirement in May 2019. She has a master’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada, and is a registered professional engineer in the State of Maryland. Prior to joining the NFPA in 2004, Kathleen was the Executive Director of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) and held research and management positions with the Civil Engineering Research Foundation, the American Iron and Steel Institute, and the National Academy of Sciences.

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Darren Gill

Director

Darren Gill

Director

Darren has more than 15 years’ experience designing and delivering urban and economic development programs for organizations like the World Bank / IFC, UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, European Investment Bank, United Nations, and private foundations. He is currently Associate Director and International Advisory Team Leader for Sustainable Futures at AtkinsRealis. Darren works as an integrator across disciplines and sectors to deliver policy recommendations, program design, urban strategies, project pipelines and infrastructure investment advice. His pioneering work on fire safety in informal settlements at Arup was a catalyst to the founding of Kindling.

David Beal

Director

David Beal

Director

David is the Vice President, Corporate Counsel with the Employment & Labor Law Department at Prudential. He provides counseling and training to internal HR and management clients regarding compliance with federal and state employment and labor laws, including laws relating to workplace discrimination, harassment, retaliation, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and contingent workforce management. He has conducted hundreds of fact-sensitive and intensive inquiries into allegations of discrimination, harassment, whistleblowing, retaliation, ethical violations, and violations of company policies.

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Noah Ryder

Director

Noah Ryder

Director

Noah has spent the last 20 years dedicated to understanding how fires and explosions interact with the built environment and natural environment. He presently serves as a Principal Engineer and Managing Partner at Fire & Risk Alliance, LLC where he leads the Risk, Modelling, Applied Research, and Forensics group. A licensed professional fire protection engineer, Noah primarily focuses on quantitative risk assessments, hazard evaluations, computer modelling, applied research, and performance-based design. He is the former chair of the Technical Committee of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) Foundation.

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Elizabeth Palmer

Director

Elizabeth Palmer

Director

Liz is currently the Global Lead for Construction at Save the Children and holds an MSc in Sustainability of the Built Environment. Following a career in private sector architecture, she has worked with the United Nations and NGOs in shelter and refugee site planning, as well as cross-sector construction programming. She currently supports the implementation of high quality and safe programming for construction for Save the Children’s Country Offices. Fire Safety is a core component of this work, with notable successes such as a nationwide fire risk reduction project in Lebanon that started in 2016.

South Africa Board

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Philippa Hurley

Chair

Philippa Hurley

Chair

Philippa is an admitted attorney with over 20 years’ consultancy experience in various areas of South African and international law. She currently focuses on NGO law, applying her expertise in everything from starting-up to restructuring, compliance, tax exemption, broad based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) and governance. Her clients are from a wide range of sectors, including disaster relief, agriculture, education, and conservation. In 2020, Philippa co-founded 10 Million Masks NPC, which created a national network of donors, makers, and support staff. As the pandemic led to economic crisis, the NPC became 10 Million Makers, which focuses on food security and poverty relief.

Jim Kennedy

Director

Jim Kennedy

Director

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Antonio Cicione

Director

Antonio Cicione

Director

Antonio is the Founder of CFS Engineering Consultants, a South African based multidisciplinary engineering firm. He has a PhD in Engineering from Stellenbosch University and consults to industry on specialist fire engineering projects, rational fire designs and fire investigations. Antonio is a committee member of the fire division of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE). He has been involved in numerous fire experiments and has burned down more than 70 full-scale houses for research. Antonio has published a number of international journal articles and conference papers on fire and structural engineering related topics.

Elizabeth Palmer

Director

Elizabeth Palmer

Director

Core Team

Danielle Antonellis

Founder & Executive Director

Danielle Antonellis

Founder & Executive Director

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Jennie Tsekwa

Head of Strategic Operations

Jennie Tsekwa

Head of Strategic Operations

Jennie is a sociologist, facilitator and researcher with 25 years of experience working on issues of social justice and equity in South Africa and the United States. She has an MPhil in Critical Diversity Studies from the University of Cape Town and has worked on quantitative and qualitative research projects across government, civil society, corporate and non-profit sectors. Drawing on her undergraduate degree in journalism, she sees storytelling as a powerful tool to understand complex social problems and amplify voices from marginalized communities. Jennie is also a professional coach, HR consultant and organizational development practitioner.

Sam Stevens

Fire Safety Engineer

Sam Stevens

Fire Safety Engineer

Sam is a fire engineering researcher with a PhD and MEng in Structural and Fire Safety Engineering from the University of Edinburgh where he has taught courses on Fire Science and Dynamics, Models for Fire Safety, and Professional Development for Engineers. Sam’s research focuses on fire spread in informal settlements and humanitarian settings. This has led him to develop a large-scale urban fire spread model, produce fire risk maps with GIS, lead instrumentation for 25 large-scale fire experiments, design a materials performance testing program, produce guidance for humanitarian response in Gaza, and teach fire science directly to informal settlement residents.

Sandra Vaiciulyte

Senior Fire Safety Researcher

Sandra Vaiciulyte

Senior Fire Safety Researcher

Sandra is an interdisciplinary researcher in fire safety, and human response to natural hazards. She has a background in sociology, behavioural sciences, fire safety engineering, and international development. Sandra is passionate about bringing together social science and engineering principles to improve safety in urban environments. During her PhD, Sandra focused on human response to wildland-urban interface evacuations at the University of Greenwich, London. She then joined Arup, where she worked on fire safety in buildings projects, fire safety research and fire safety education for engineers. Currently Sandra is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

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Daina Banelyte

Executive Assistant

Daina Banelyte

Executive Assistant

Daina is Kindling’s Executive Assistant and Bookkeeper who brings extensive experience from corporate environments. Her expertise is essential in managing invoices, expenses, team schedules and availability, as well as event and travel bookings. She ensures smooth daily operations and handling confidential information with the utmost discretion. Known for her attention to detail and organizational skills, Daina supports the team in financial and administrative tasks, facilitating effective collaboration across the organization. She holds an AAT Level 3 Advanced Diploma in Accountancy and is currently pursuing Level 4 to further expand her financial skillset.

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Awodwa Ntlali

Communications Officer

Awodwa Ntlali

Communications Officer

Awodwa joined Kindling as a Community-Based Researcher and is now Kindling’s Communications Officer, responsible for community mobilisation, translation and stakeholder engagement, amongst other responsibilities. She currently coordinates the advisory committee for Kindling’s pilot fire risk assessment and fire risk reduction planning program in Cape Town. A resident of Khayelitsha, Awodwa has a deep understanding of the fire risks facing informal settlements and is passionate about community safety and upliftment. She has worked on numerous community-based projects, including clean-up drives and civic engagement training.

Advisors

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David Rush

David is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, where he obtained his PhD in Fire Safety Engineering in 2013. His research focuses on fires in informal settlements in Cape Town (IRIS-Fire) and Nairobi (Tomorrow’s Cities). Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative social surveys, state-of-the-art multi-scale experiments, computational fluid dynamics modelling, and unique and novel applications of existing satellite data and analysis, David and his team are developing tools and methods to understand and improve the resilience of informal settlements to fire.

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George Faller

George is a structural and fire safety engineer with more than three decades of international experience. His structural engineering, fire engineering and performance-based design work evolved into a career dedicated to improving workplace safety in global supply chains, advising governments, labour organisations, and garment sector brands on building safety. George has worked with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), RMG Sustainability Council in Bangladesh, Chief Safety Officer for the International Accord Foundation (rolling out their Pakistan program). He is currently working for Inditex to roll out an ambitious carbon reduction program across their supply chain.

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Guillermo Rein

Guillermo is Professor of Fire Science at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Imperial College London and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Fire Technology. With a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, his research is centred on heat transfer, combustion and fire. The purpose of his work is to reduce the worldwide burden of accidental fires and protect people, their property, and the environment. His work has been recognised internationally with a number of research awards (e.g. 2018 SFPE Guise Medal, 2017 The Engineer Collaborate-to-Innovate Prize, 2017 Combustion Institute Sugden Award, 2016 SFPE Lund Award).

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Reasat Faisal

Reasat is a passionate and seasoned development professional with many years of experience in international development at national and international levels. He has a PhD in Economics (Climate Change, Migration, and Urban Development), an MA in Urban Planning with a focus on urban resilience, and a BSc in Electrical Engineering. His doctoral research explored how climate-induced migrants in Bangladesh’s readymade garment sector navigate multi-stage transitions in their lives and livelihoods. Until September 2020, Reasat led program development, resource mobilization, strategy, innovation and real-time data management teams of BRAC Urban Development Program in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

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John Twigg

John is an Honorary Professor at University College London, an independent researcher and consultant on disaster risk reduction, and a co-editor of the journal Disasters. His research interests include community-based approaches, extensive risks, early warning systems, socio-economic vulnerability to disasters, policy and institutional aspects of disaster management, post-disaster transitions and urban resilience. John has 30 years of experience working on disaster risk reduction (DRR) in the academic and non-profit sectors, comprising consultancy, research and graduate-level teaching, as well as supporting international NGOs and bilateral and multilateral agencies.

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Kaitlin Shilling

Kaitlin has extensive experience working with city leaders, governments, non-profits and the private sector in designing programs for resilience, climate change and development, strategic management, social entrepreneurship, and impact design. Her work addresses the linkages between climate change and security, food and climate change, and economic development and government capacity. Kaitlin has a PhD in Environment and Resources, and has worked in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, Africa and the Caribbean on projects funded by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNOPS, USAID, private foundations and corporates. She is currently Global Resilience & Adaptation Lead for Arup.

Trusted by organisations worldwide

We are proud to collaborate with organisations across research, humanitarian response, policy, and practice. These partnerships are essential in advancing fire safety where it is needed most.