A Kenyan Guide To Corporate Careers in the USA

Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are purely mine. it does not necessarily represent the views of any of the author(s) or contributors to the Career Guide.

Whenever good information on education comes out, one really never hears about it. Kenyan Professionals USA have done us proud.
Often our interaction with people doing well comes from the older generation grapevine, where the mother set will tell stories of so-and-so, working in (insert US city of your choice), great job, he was just lucky. This group of Kenyan professionals have talked and decided to do something about this information gap.

Within the mainstream corporate culture here, it is easy to focus on the woes and not the great network of Kenyans who are pursuing successful careers in the corporate world. This guide to corporate careers in the USA is great for anyone interested in the corporate experiences of Kenyans in the USA.

We have a rich tradition of excellence among academics and professionals all over the world, and this group came together in 2006 to prepare a guide for Kenyans to plug into resources for the next level of professional engagement.

Your instructions are clear. Just read the guide. Do not hesitate to read for yourself. We come from a culture where people like to be told via radio, clarion etc. Like all guides, you figure where you are in the thought process and get spreading the word people.

BOOK REVIEW Learning To Love Africa: My Journey To Harvard Business School and Back

Author: Monique Maddy
Year of Publication: 2004
Publisher: HarperCollins

This is a story about a unique woman, Monique Maddy, whose heritage, education, experiences and achievements to date are admirable and worth a second look. She leads the reader through a series of life events that call her to look within herself and try everything that she can to succeed. Her trip to the point of Harvard Business school is a witty account of her birth and early childhood in Liberia, English schooling and American collegiate exposure. my dear Uncle, an avid reader, encouraged me to read her story sometime, and I thank him dearly for his advice.

There is more to this lady than just her studies. She illustrates in lucid detail the sacrifices that her family made to ensure that she was a recipient of the best opportunities that life can afford. In her welcoming style, she pays homage to her late father, Emmanuel, whose vision for his children transcended the borders of Sierra Leone, where he was born, and Liberia, where he raised a family. Her story about her father is a doorway to the acumen and sterling business traditions of his ancestors. This insight is reinforced by the description of Ma Kema, Monique’s maternal grandmother who was a stoic example of the strength that people in rural Africa possess in the midst of upheavals and changing culture.

Monique was sent at the age of six to boarding school in England as there was no other British education available, to her father’s specification. Her feeling of alienation is tangible as she navigates the all-white system. Her family returns her and her brother to the fold after a few years, as the separation proves daunting for their normal life together.
Later, however, the same feelings of belonging to Africa prevail in her high school and college studies in the United States of America.

Monique provides us with a familiar backdrop to the developments in Liberia that led it to its present turmoil. Lacking the strong government needed to drive infrastructure development, Liberia arms itself with multinational investment in the form of companies such as LAMCO, a mining company with which her father works. LAMCO is the sole provider of school, hospital, road and job for many of the employees and residents of Yekepa, their small village. The small village echoes the growth of other company towns in Africa and other developing countries. However, tribalism mars co-operation in the village as the growing discontent between the indigenous people and the Americo-Liberian population.

However, by far the most significant role that Monique has played was as the initiator of the ACG Company, later named Adesemi, whose role in defining entrepreneurship in Africa leads the field of developing country investment initiatives in the late 1990s. Monique’s Harvard Business School experience came after five years’ experience in the lower ranks of the United Nations organization. Maddy, who had firmly believed in the development mandate of the organization, becomes disenchanted with its bureaucracy and results, thus she decided to return and obtain a Harvard MBA with her memories of the business needs of the developing world as her eventual emphasis.

Starting a business in Africa is not for the faint hearted. Monique Maddy marshaled some of Harvard’s most brilliant minds and watched them abandon the project midway for safaris. It was only after this mutiny that she linked up with Come Lague as her saving partner in the initiative. His enthusiasm for the project and his commitment spurred a longer commitment, renewed enthusiasm in Monique, and went on to be the beginning of their commitment to ACG and a lifelong friendship. While the project did not last, the lessons of its development from investment to local partnership did. The lessons continue to feature in classrooms at business schools over the world.

Of interest to sports afficionados is that Ms Maddy has actually trained and ran marathons. She trained with some of the great Kenyan runners of the last decade and even credits Paul Tergat, a Kenyan indoor athlete turned marathoner for inspiration.

This is a book not to be missed by any, whether or not you have ever been to Africa.

Mama Greenbelt : Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize 2004, Kenya

Ever since I was a young girl, the single motivation for women in my wider circle rang with a single two vowel name, Wangari. I knew then that this woman was the one who stopped the grabbing of Uhuru Park, who was beaten at Karura Forest and who was so well read and outspoken, that the Establishment of the time saw fit to call her names in public and humiliate her to no end. I knew she was my preferred woman candidate in 1997. At that time when I, like other Kenyans was inundated by the usual mudslinging and dirty politicking that is so prevalent in Kenya, she ran on a Green platform pledging then as she does now, to commit to preserving resources and good governance.

I was overjoyed when she won her prize in 2004 for her over 30 years’ work with the Greenbelt Movement. As an admirer and budding activist I attended her lecture last October at the University of Pennsylvania’s Green City Symposium organised by UPenn’s Institute for Urban Research. There, for the first time, I heard her speak and I gained a better perspective of the issues that challenged her early on to fight for the better use of resources as a tool for democracy and good governance. I also picked up a copy of her book ‘Unbowed’. I was wowed!

Professor Wangari Muta Maathai’s name is mentioned in the same breath as Mahatma Gandhi and other luminaries as a pillar of change for her generation. In her book she outlines her upbringing in Central Kenya, and her experiences within an environment where people, by tradition revered and cared for the environment. Her education was supported by her family in an era where few women reached high school level and of those who did, a handful went on to professions other than teaching and clerking. However, her dream to study something else together with her top performance put her in line to receive a scholarship with the Kennedy Airlift, prompted in part by the late Tom Mboya. Sadly, she returned to a Kenya where already fuel shortage was becoming a problem and water catchment areas were drying up.This state of affairs was to give impetus to her later activism.

Her studies in the US followed by her return home may ring a bell with women in the sciences who still do not get enough respect for their academic achievements. She returned home to meet and marry her husband, with whom she later separates. She categorises this time in her life under ‘Difficult Years’. She went from her relatively stable life to that of a single broke mother and recalls being unable to buy her kids even a plate of chips. I grew up knowing that chips on an outing was something to be had, however, I digress.Many women have reached the point where they are the sole breadwinners for their homes. Wangari is no exception to the rule, especially as she chronicles the stigma she experienced as a divorced woman in Kenya of the late 70s and 80s. Our society is still so unforgiving.

The book outlines a few key roles that women in the public in Kenya have played over the last few decades as powerful political figures. Naturally, those who remember the National Council of Women of Kenya and the Maendeleo Ya Wanawake triumphs and debacles will refresh their memories. Wangari stood by her husband as he ran for Parliament in the 70s and her own political debut in the late 80s. The contrasts in campaigns illustrate why then as now, Kenya is still not ready to accept women leaders in official capacities.

No story about Wangari Maathai is complete without a mention of the brutality she was dealt by the government to the point of hiding and the injuries she sustained whose scars she bears to date. There is a story that sits in the background of her description, that is, that of her children who saw all that their mother underwent while dealing with her occassional absences as a result. I salute them.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I could go on and on about Wangari Maathai. The better advice for you, dear reader is to order your own copy of Unbowed. In a world where we shy away from reading about other people, her memoir is a portrait of a Kenyan we can tell, ‘Well lived, Aluta Continua’ and truly emulate. A few years ago we had a segment in the local TV stations that said, “So-And-So, A truly great Kenyan. She is one truly great Kenyan.

For me, I say to Dr Maathai what the women said to her, “Wangari, you shall never walk alone, and (my own words) your example shall never be forgotten”

Picture: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai before entering Oslo City Hall to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Copyright © Pressens Bild AB 2004*
Photo: John McConnico