Our Founders

IN 2002,

The Foundation for African Medicine & Education, FAME, was founded by Frank Artress and Susan Gustafson from the United States.

Dr. Artress is an American physician. He has traveled extensively and participated in medical relief projects around the globe. His wife, Susan, is trained in counseling and educational psychology and worked for many years in school-based mental health and prevention. 

Frank and Susan have lived and worked in Tanzania since 2003 and currently reside in Karatu, Tanzania. They coordinate and oversee the day-to-day operations of all FAME projects. 

Hear more about their story here.

Certain places on the planet can capture a person's heart and alter the direction of one's life. For us, Tanzania is such a place.

At the start of the new millennium we found ourselves at a crossroads and began to experience a shift in how we wanted to spend the second half of our lives. For years, we had talked about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Finally in July of 2002, we began our ascent of the highest peak in Africa.

At the time, we could not have known Frank would nearly die atop that mountain, nor how those critical moments would shape the rest of our lives. The perseverance, generosity, and resourcefulness of our guide and his crew awakened us to the resilience of the human spirit - that place inside each of us where grace and strength reside.

After several months back in the U.S., we decided to return to Tanzania, this time to contribute back to a people whose voice is rarely heard in the rest of the world, a people who have few opportunities to share their wisdom, their strength, and their dreams with the rest of us.

From this place, the Foundation for African Medicine and Education was born.