And here I am, in Kigali, Rwanda
in a very “comfy” leather couch in a coffee shop where there is fast enough to
blog WIFI and - for the record - “the best ginger honey lemon” tea of the
world.
Yes, I have been since last 24th
of May in Rwanda mainly living in the countryside in a small town called SAVE,
in the south of the country. I
have tweeted a lot always using the hashtag #WLPRwanda2012, which is the
Program though which I am here: the Babson Women’s Leadership Program. Yet nor the Tweets neither the pictures
I have managed to post of Facebook are enough to capture all what has been
lived. Luckily despite the
technology, we humans will always have hearts and minds where all can be stored
forever.
There are too many angles from which I could write about
Rwanda, and hopefully I will. But being a Babson MBA student, of course I need
to start with our DNA topic: ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Specially because just few
minutes ago I finished a pleasant Sunday morning meeting with one of them, and
get so motivated that remembered that I needed to blog.
Babson celebrates Entrepreneurs of ALL kinds and my short
stay in Rwanda has been a playground to meet Entrepreneurs of all kinds. I want
to introduce you some of them.
1. Alphonse, the evidence of the power of Corporate Entrepreneurship
I might be over-excited with the
whole idea of Corporate Entrepreneurship as one of the most effective ways to
create high impact ventures, just because I just started (my first ever!) independent
academic research called: “Anatomy of the Colombian High Growth Entrepreneurs:
making the case for Corporate Entrepreneurship”, supervised by Babson Professor
Jay Rao. The research is inspired in the need of Innpulsa Colombia, where I will be doing an internship in
the second half of my 2012 summer.
But coming back to Alphonse, he
is just one of the many cases we expect to find in my research. Alphonse (who
is the father of the only Rwandan undergrad student at Babson!) worked for 15+
years in big organizations, being Heineken one of them. He has done Talent
Management, Marketing and Corporate Development functions and now he is
focusing in developing a conglomerate of Education/Career Development
companies, as I see it! Partly with support of Babson he launched already a
Business Language Institute in Rwanda, which he put into action right after a
team of Babson students helped him with the Business Plan some years back.
Heineken is being a true Anchor Firm for him, not only was Heineken his first
client, but also they even gave him space in their premises to host the
business. “I talked directly to the CEO and he loved the idea”, “I have the
network” – are some of the aspects he shared with me and show the powerful role
of Anchor firms.
Now Alphonse wants to move on
with a Career Development firm, by the way totally in synergy with his current
a Business Language Institute. We meet to see how I could help him developing
the product and we do have a roadmap for that! I was too passionate since I am
also passionate about Education and the opportunities in this space in
countries as Rwanda and my own Colombia are infinite. The developed world has
so many models that are just waiting to be adapted to our realities, and as
Professor Isenberg says, many times is all about “minnovation”.
Me and Alphonse, in Kigali
2. Geraldine, First Rwandan Woman in the
Supreme Court
Geraldine was the first Rwandan
leader we met after we landed in Kigali. Ben, one of the country directors of
the Babson Rwanda Entrepreneurship Center whispered to me after we sat in the
table in Heaven Restaurant with Geraldine the following: “She is a very modest
person, but she has an amazing story behind being the first Rwandan Woman
making it to the Supreme Court”.
My lesson from Geraldine: Balance and family. Although you expected
her to talk about all what it took her to make it to Harvard despite her humble
origins, she was very emphatic sharing her conscious effort to be a “A” wife,
“A” daughter and “A” mother. “I shower my kids, just to make sure every day
there is nothing wrong in their bodies” - she said. And her agenda does look like the one of someone
that is even in town enough to do that, but she does. Another inspiring aspect
is how she talked about her parents, even if not with her, everything she does
is oriented to make them proud.
Me and Geraldine
3. Robin Smyth, The social Entrepreneur behind African
Bagel Company
Robyn, a nurse by profession, and his husband moved from the
USA to Rwanda with their 4 kids to drive social change. I can’t find a simpler
way to describe it. She had her family had always been involved I social
initiatives to support Africa but at some point they felt they could and needed
to do more. After few visits before to Rwanda, they decided one day that they
would stay for a longer period of time to see if they could adapt and establish
there. And they indeed did adapt and establish.
Roby founded the AFRICAN BAGEL COMPANY (ABC), that is “THE” place
to go in Kigali if you want “American style” bakery goods, specially bagels,
doughnuts, cakes, chips, sandwiches and all that goodies that seen “common” to
us but a rare treat when you are an expat in Rwanda. You have to see how full this place was on saturday. Insane!
Well, but that's not the real success of ABC. Behind ABC there is an institute to train and empower Rwandan women in cooking and customer care - Rwandan hands are the ones that bake, package and sale the goods and they have found in this new activity a gateway out of poverty. It is still a relative small model in terms of the quantity of women supported, yet the more I am in Africa the more I realize the High Scale Change is an oxymoron. You start with a small community and then you replicate. And this is more and less how Robyn sees it happening.
My lesson from Robyn:
Impact is to be done in the ground and if you feel that the place where you are
at is not close enough to that playground, you need to find ways to get closer,
even if it implies leaving your whole life behind for a while. Understand first
the people you are trying to help, only through doing that you will be able to
support and empower them better.
The Babson WLP Team with Robyn
Life is good. When you are around role models anywhere in the world, nothing can just go wrong.
Hope to have time to blog even often, since certainly the list of entrepreneurs to talk about goes on. For now, it’s time to pay for the delicious tea and go back to my students!
