With an engineering degree in hand, Patricia Griffin was probably destined for a job at an auto plant. But while studying for her MBA at Michigan’s Ross School of Business in 2009, she became part of a WDI-sponsored student team that traveled to a Ugandan hospital. The experience changed her life, and the course of her career. As part of the project, Griffin examined Kumi Hospital’s inventory management system and saw that it often ran out of life-saving drugs. So she worked with the drug warehouse clerk on some basic supply chain management principles. “In a matter of seven weeks, the hospital had stopped stocking out of essential medicines and patients stopped suffering,” Griffin said. “At that point, I realized my skill set was valuable and rare in this part of the world. And I could either go back to the auto industry to eke out two seconds of additional productivity on an assembly line or return to Africa and save lives. The right choice was obvious to me.” After earning her master’s degree, Griffin took a fellowship with LGT Venture Philanthropy working with Bridge International Academies in Kenya. She also oversaw operations at a nonprofit that partnered with local, smallholder farmers in Kenya to grow trees as a cash crop, and advised more than a dozen health entrepreneurs in Kenya and Ethiopia for the global development firm Abt Associates. These work experiences helped Griffin discover where she could best contribute. In 2014, she started her own company in Kenya – called Inagape – that buys fruit from local farmers, dries it, packages it and then sells it as healthy snacks under the name Snak Afya. Its first product is a dried coconut snack Patricia Griffin Alumni Features Patricia Griffin in Kenya. 58 William Davidson Institute