‘Investing in education will help to empower someone’.

If you’d have asked Jennipher Musa to predict where she might be right now ten years ago, I’m not sure her answer would have been working in New York City. After graduating from Pestalozzi in 2013, she went on to Smith College in Massachusetts to obtain a dual degree in Economics and Mathematics. Thereafter she worked as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs in NYC, and then at a hedge fund called Marathon Asset Management in Manhattan where she was a Marketing and Client Service Analyst. In 2020 she went back into education and commenced her MSc in Economics at University of Edinburgh.

Jennipher is one of those people who instantly makes you feel at ease with her warmth and friendly nature. Although we didn’t have long together, we took the time to discuss Pestalozzi’s impact on her life and why she feels it’s important for Pestalozzi’s work to continue.

‘Without Pestalozzi I would still be in Zambia; Economics and Spanish were both new for me at Pestalozzi. Continuing Pestalozzi through UWC, means they are still creating an opportunity for someone to receive quality education. Can you help to change one person’s life? That’s enough of a reason to keep it going. It’s still valuable. Even the experience of living in the UK for two years for me was really good. Living in a developing country limits you in some ways, but Pestalozzi opened up the world for me’.

Pestalozzi also provided a network for Jennipher ready for when she first arrived in the US. With a number of our alumni already living and studying in America, she already had connections and support should she need any help in settling in.

‘Thank you to donors for making it possible for me to expand my horizons and for an eye opening experience that has changed the way I look at the world and the way I think of possibilities for the development of my country. Because of your donations I was able to be exposed to a developed world and my expectations of what could be of Zambia have increased’.

In the future Jennipher hopes to go back to Zambia and open an economic consulting firm. However she also spoke about something a little more surprising; working as a commercial farmer.

‘We tend to have a lot of food shortages on the African continent and yet we have land that can be used to grow crops. Most farmers don’t have the capital to meet the needs as they are on small farms.I want to help change that’.

My time with Jennipher showed me someone is driven by kindness and has worked to get to where she is with a fierce determination. I am excited to see how the next few years unravel for her, whether that’s within consultancy or pig farming. There’s a sentence I’ve never typed before!