A refugee forced at 11 to flee violence in your native Ethiopia, you and your family wound up in what must have seemed a strange and unlikely place: Minnesota.
Some might describe your subsequent life and career as unlikely too. But you’ve never allowed yourself to be limited by likelihoods. Hard work, an amazing family and a keen mind took you to Williams. To Harvard Law. To a federal appeals court clerkship and ultimately to Wall Street, where you helped build a leading mergers and acquisitions advisory firm.
Eventually, after 25 years away, you returned to Ethiopia. You wrote a well- regarded memoir about what you had lost there as a child and what you found as an adult.
What you found was a generation whose potential could be unleashed, as yours was, through high-quality educational opportunities that “unlocked every door.”
So you founded Ethiopia Education Initiatives. A nonprofit designed to unlock doors and then to shepherd hundreds of children through them to better futures, for themselves and their nation.
EEI has opened Haile-Manas Academy, a secondary boarding school for 400 girls and boys. You built the academy literally from nothing. You opened it nearly three years ago; you’re inviting Ethiopia’s most promising students to come, analyze and think critically, collaborate and think creatively about Ethiopia’s future.
Back in the United States, you remain active in finance and serve also as board chair of Emily’s List. But perhaps your most lasting contribution will be rejecting – once again – the idea of “unlikelihood,” this time not for yourself but for Ethiopia.
In recognition of your distinguished achievement in service to your college, Williams is proud to honor you with its Bicentennial Medal.