Business Daily Africa recently ran a profile about Edwin Macharia '01, a partner at Dalberg Advisors, a strategy and policy advisory firm specializing in global development. The regional director for Dalberg in Africa, Macharia spoke with the business journal about the impact his youth had on what he does today.
His path to martialing data to advise firms and governments started under a tree in Kenya’s Homa Bay. It would take him to Amherst, where he majored in biology.
“We moved around a lot as a family. My dad worked for Barclays, my mom was a high schoolteacher. Therefore, every three or so years we’d move to a different place. I ended up in Homa Bay, learning in Dholuo under a tree because the wind had taken off the classroom roof and there was no money to get another one,” he said. “Learning under a tree allowed me to see that people are the same. Your history, your culture, the people around you, and your influences construct your moral universe. But your moral universe is a construct, so how do you deconstruct it? There was value in learning under a tree, look where I am today, I sit across heads of state.”