Each month we will shine a spotlight on a member of our Talent Network to help you meet each other virtually. We start the series with Hady Barry, one of the first Jacobs Fellows at the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley.
Tell us a little bit about yourself
I think
of myself as a West African, as I grew up in Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal.
I’m a strong believer in living a life of purpose and am passionate about the
power of education to transform lives. I’m currently finishing my MBA at UC
Berkeley Haas and in my spare time I produce podcasts. Before Haas I worked in
international development for a USAID contractor with a strong focus on agribusiness
in West and East Africa. After Haas I’ll be joining
FSG, one of
the leading social impact consulting firms.
Why
did you apply for the Jacobs Foundation Business Fellowship?
I applied
for the Jacobs Foundation Business Fellowship because of the strong alignment
between the goals of the Fellowship and mine. I have been lucky to have had
access to a wonderful education and it has inspired me to pursue a career path
that would enable the same access for other African girls. I wanted to work at
the intersection of business and education and this desire led me to Haas. It
was a wonderful moment when I discovered the Jacobs Foundation Fellowship and
how well my personal goals aligned with the Foundation’s work, in particular
the
Transforming Education in Cocoa
Communities
(TRECC) program in Côte d’Ivoire.
What did you plan to do during the
Fellowship?
Given my interest in social entrepreneurship I wanted
to use my time at UC Berkeley to incubate ideas on how to bring education to
girls, in particular high quality education. The Jacobs Foundation Fellowship
was a wonderful gift that gave me the freedom to explore this path. Through
Haas I was able to sit on the board of the
Daraja Education Fund (DEF), which supports the Daraja
Academy for girls in Kenya. I also took classes on entrepreneurship and design
thinking but found it challenging to design solutions when living so far away
from my target constituents. I had left West Africa a while ago and struggled
with ways to test out hypotheses and my assumptions on the realities on the
ground. Therefore, I returned to Senegal for an internship with
Dalberg Global Development Advisors. I also accepted that not leaving
Haas ready to launch a social enterprise was not a failure. I had realized that
I wanted to take more time to really understand the challenges that contribute
to poor access to education African girls face. This summer I will be joining
the Jacobs Foundation’s TRECC Impact Finance team in Abidjan as a Fellow. v
How will you use the Jacobs Foundation
Talent Network in the future?
I am
really interested in the Talent Network and all the combined expertise it has
to offer. I hope to connect with influencers and industry experts in education.
I am also interested to connect with the media Fellows as I am interested in
the intersection of media and business. It’s a wonderful opportunity to have
access to so many people from different sectors.