Suppose there is one obstinate holdout against the encroaching homogeneity of professions and all the other culprits of career sameness. In that case, Richard Waitumbi is at the vanguard. The 34-year-old Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, is blitzing through the rungs.
Saying parents “gave me everything they could from an educational standpoint,” he made a promise to work hard. And did. “I quickly realised that there was a much bigger world than engineering that I’d come to believe was my future,” he says.
A scholarship to the US to study engineering led to a snowballing of events. He moved into management consulting at Bain and Company, where he came across private equity investing. He was always interested in how investments he makes can drive job creation. That’s how he got into impact investing “at a time when it was still pretty unknown.”
He was keen on investments that help people with special needs like autism to learn more effectively and prepare them for adult lives, and investments in companies that bring high-quality tech jobs into rural deserts. With such precocious talent, dovetailed by grr and grit, he caught the eye of former mentors; his old boss wooing him to join his super team as the star quarterback at Goldman Sachs.
"I quickly realised that there was a much bigger world than engineering, which I had come to believe was my future."
There is always another mountain to summit, a river to cross, he says.
With an MBA from Harvard Business School and an undergrad in Engineering Sciences and Chemical Engineering from Dartmouth College, Waitumbi serves on the Board of Directors of Interplay Learning, a provider of immersive skilled trades training, and Ignite Reading, a Science of Reading-Based literacy tutoring platform.
-Eddy Ashioya