A Short Backgrounder, Part One

How did I get here? And where have I been? Questions I’ve asked myself a few times of late. After seven months in Lima, the last one and a half of which I spent separately traveling with parents and friends from London, I decided the time had come to move on. But move on to what? I had looked into a few jobs which would make some use of my combined experience in the finance and non-profit arenas. I had even had a telephonic interview between Lima and my interlocutor in Nairobi (where she was visiting on business) for a job based in Washington DC. The line was bad and my interview sharpness not much better. The outcome was as expected.

Around the same time I pursued a connection I had made shortly before leaving London. During the whirlwind few weeks between leaving Goldman Sachs and leaving on a jet plane in June 2007 I had breakfast with the lovely Cassia who I’d been put in contact with by a colleague. Cassia worked at the Clinton Foundation, regularly commuting between London and various places in Africa, working in a division of the Foundation called CHAI. It sounded like tea, it sounded like fun. We spoke for about an hour at the conclusion of which she told me to give her a call when I was done in Peru because they were always looking for “people like you”. At the time my thoughts were more focused on microfinance than health system strengthening as I felt my finance background was more suited to the former. However a few months’ reflection led me to realise that my passion lay in international development generally not microfinance specifically. So come December 2007 I did what Cassia suggested. Unfortunately she didn’t answer my emails and I had no contact number for her. I did find out through our mutual friend the Goldman Sachs colleague that Cassia had gone on maternity leave but that she didn’t know much more than that as they hadn’t been in touch for a while. As practitioners of the espionage trade would say, the lead went cold.

As my pre-planned departure date of mid February slipped to late February, I did at last book my flight out believing that my future lay in the States, leaving behind some great friends and a wonderful Peruvian family who had taken me in as their sixth (and eldest) child. My grandmother in California was in failing health and I decided to move in with my uncle there to spend some time with her, a grandmother who had been a major influence in my life. This turned out to be fortuitous timing as just eighteen days later I watched as she breathed her final breath, thankful that I’d been able to spend a couple weeks with her. Her passing was to foretell further sadness in the family as both my French grandparents succumbed to old age just three months later and within a week of each other. My French grandfather had similarly loomed large in my formative years and I was fortunate to be able to spend some time with him just prior to his passing when I visited France in June.

From early March, when I arrived in California, until exam day in early June I had been studying for the second level of the CFA, the first level of which I had passed in 2003, since when I had concertedly avoided any further participation. By this time my decision to resume the qualification resulted from the combined desires of pursuing something useful to my career as well as giving me space to contemplate my next move. It succeeded on one of those fronts at least. By early June I was back into job-searching again in full force. Applications went out to various non-profits and a further attempt at contact with Cassia was made, this time successfully. I was extremely saddened to hear from her that she and her husband had experienced a tragedy in the intervening period and despite this Cassia was as helpful to me as could be and excited that I’d contacted her. She ran me through the various possibilities available at CHAI (Clinton HIV / AIDS Initiative) and asked me to forward my curriculum vitae.

A set of interviews ensued for a position which would have involved travelling around a third of Africa on a fairly constant basis assisting countries in their procurement and internal distribution of drugs. (That would be malaria prophylaxes and HIV anti-retrovirals rather than cocaine and ecstasy tablets.) Fortunately for me some combination of the three interviewers decided I wasn’t suited to the post and immediately it was suggested that I consider a “managerial” position. The job would have been very satisfying but too restless and clearly would have upped my carbon footprint by a not insignificant number of cubic metres. The Foundation’s suggestion was well taken. There followed two interviews, one with the CHAI Country Director for Rwanda and Burundi, Pascal, and t’other with the gentleman I would be replacing, the Program Manager for Rural Health, a Kenyan by the name of Kisimbi (which, I would later learn, is his family name; apparently all six sons in the family refer to themselves by their last name which causes no end of amusement when friends call their house in Nairobi). The interviews failed to entice me to say anything controversial or stupid and a visit to Kigali was hastily arranged for a tête-à-tête. After a mammoth Las Vegas – Washington DC – Rome – Addis Ababa – Kigali country-hop I arrived in Kigali for four days to seal the deal.

Thus am I now in the employ of the Clinton Foundation providing technical assistance to the Rwandan Ministry of Health. This has prompted several observers (as though I have those) to ask what exactly in my professional experience qualifies me to provide technical assistance on health matters to an African government. Or any government for that matter. Allow me to explain.