Dr. Dereje B. Tessema is a scholar-practitioner combining the professional experience and academic and research worlds. He is an adjunct faculty member in the Master of Professional Studies in Project Management Program at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies, a research fellow at the Nile House and International Conference on Interdisciplinary Research Studies (ICIRS), and co-founder of Teach and Serve for Africa (TASFA).
As a practitioner, he has managed IT projects and programs for the US federal government for the last 19 years. As a scholar, he has taught graduate and doctoral program courses at various universities around the world in the fields of project and program management, emotional intelligence, enterprise architecture, leadership, and lean and agile management.
Dr. Tessema maintains expertise in the areas of project management; leadership mentorship; Agile development, deployment, and support; sustainability; emotional intelligence, and organizational transformation. His present research focuses on sustainability, equitable utilization of the Nile Waters, and the geo and hydro politics of the Nile River Basin. His most recent book “How this Happened: Demystifying the Nile: History and Events Leading to the Realization of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)” (Gashe Publishing 2023)”) features the challenges and opportunities encountered over the years from the sources to the mouth of the Nile River.