🌳 Issue #43: The Tree of Knowledge
Dr. Takako Mino and the founding story of Musizi University in Uganda
💬 Welcome to issue #43 of Between the Lines
Uganda is currently at a crossroads. With 43 million people and one of the fastest-growing populations in the world, they still rely on a legacy education system that hasn’t been modernized for over 100 years. In the past, the strategy to mitigate these shortfalls has been to send the best and brightest from Uganda to leading universities abroad. Claremont alumnus Dr. Takako Mino, however, has set out to change this with Musizi University in Uganda. Read on to learn more about one of Africa’s newest liberal arts colleges and the Claremont graduate behind the initiative. ⬇️
~ Josh & Miles
📢 👥 Community Voices: The Tree of Knowledge
Author: Takako Mino
Takako Mino is the co-founder of Musizi University, and she is also an adjunct lecturer at Ashesi University in Ghana. She holds a B.A. in International Relations from Claremont McKenna College and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Education from Claremont Graduate University. Before Ashesi, Takako taught high school English in the U.S. and advised an award-winning student-led publication. Previously, she launched the Public Debate Program in Africa with local non-governmental organizations, which reached over 50,000 students in East Africa.
Right now, Uganda is at a crossroads. We have 43 million people and one of the fastest-growing populations in the world but an education system that is barely updated from 100 years ago. Infrastructure and teaching methods have largely remained the same from when the population was 3 million people. The strategy to mitigate these shortfalls has been to send the best and brightest to leading universities abroad.
What if we could do education differently, and instead of sending our best and brightest to expensive universities abroad, we could teach them here with world-class teachers from Uganda and around the world?
If you were going to send the best and brightest Ugandans to a university abroad, it would cost 5 million dollars just to educate 15 students for 4 years. But with our innovative model, we could start a self-sustaining world-class international university in Uganda that will educate 500 students a year and be a place where the world could learn more about Uganda and Africa.
We are looking for our founding donors and investors, and we seek to partner with companies interested in industry engagement opportunities such as hiring interns from Musizi, sponsoring hackathons, and collaborating on projects to create innovative solutions to global challenges. We would love to connect with you to share more and discuss opportunities to partner to create a better us and a better world.👇
🚨Claremonster Call-Out: Arjun Dutt
Arjun Dutt (CMC) is currently the SVP of Customer Operations and Product Strategy at Purchasing Platform, a Chicago-based B2B marketplace focused on under-served sectors of the real estate industry. Arjun’s focus is on developing scalable processes and enhancing the productivity of critical functions tied to the customer lifecycle. He also leads product strategy for the firm, overseeing the product management and product marketing functions.
Prior to joining the Purchasing Platform, Arjun was the CEO of Semantify, the world’s first AI-powered cognitive search and analytics engine for enterprise data. He oversaw the long-term corporate strategy, including funding, and guided the firm through an exit in early 2019. He also previously worked for Chicago-based Fieldglass, which was acquired in 2015 by SAP for $1.1B - the first unicorn exit in Chicago history.
Currently, Arjun and Purchasing Platform are also looking to hire some Claremont talent for a variety of roles:
🤝 Pardon the Introduction: Crescent Fund
Big news from Crescent Fund – they’ve officially built out Team Claremont with representation from each of the 5 undergraduate Claremont Colleges! If you didn’t already know, Crescent Fund is Southern California’s 1st student-run VC.
Its mission is to support and embolden the most thoughtful, creative, interdisciplinary, diverse, and compassionate student-entrepreneurs driven to change the world for the better – starting with Southern California: an unparalleled cultural capital with the highest concentration of top engineering schools and liberal arts colleges in the world.
With partners from 12 SoCal schools, we’ve invested in 5 SoCal-student-founded startups to date and have nearly finished raising our first $1M fund. Feel free to email us if you’d like to get in touch!
💼 Who’s Hiring?:
Julian Buckner is a Claremont alumnus and the Founder & CEO of VESTA — a tech-enabled design and furniture business. Their software turns every home into a showroom - enabling a complete multi-channel customer experience with vertical and horizontal integration. This model has positioned Vesta to be both a platform provider to the design industry as well as its most dominant provider of tech-enabled services. They’re currently looking for a Series A/B Product Manager. If you’re interested in learning more or applying, reach out to Julian.
Make sure to check out the 6,000+ open jobs at 400+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, make sure to create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 750+ remote jobs, 180+ internships, or 30+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention Claremonsters!
As always, if any of these roles catch your eye 👀 , apply and mention Between the Lines. Or if you are an employer and are looking to hire tip-top Claremont talent, fill out this form to have your jobs featured.
🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This week’s top listen 🔥
Jennifer Doudna (PO) is the co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences (along with Scribe Therapeutics, Editas Medicine, Caribou Biosciences, and Intellia Therapeutics 🐸 ☕️). She was just recently featured on the Economist’s podcast to talk about her Nobel Prize and her CRISPR developments.
Everything else you need to know….📖
Yvonne Wassenaar is an HMC Board of Trustee member and also the CEO of Puppet - an open-source software configuration management and deployment tool. Congrats to Yvonne and Puppet on their recent acquisition by Perforce. TechCrunch has more on Puppet and the acquisition.
A great thread on the difficulty and commitment involved with sustained success by investor and managing partner of Altos Ventures, Ho Nam (HMC).
Upside just rebranded and raised a $165M Series D round led by General Catalyst, Bessemer Ventures, and Builders VC. Co-founded by Tom Vaughan (HMC), Upside is a retail technology company with a mission to help communities thrive. It’s also the Claremont community’s latest unicorn. 🦄
Tom Preston-Werner, HMC alumnus and the former co-founder/CTO of Github, is also the founder of RedwoodJS - an open-source, full-stack web framework designed to help you grow from side project to startup. They just launched a fund to invest in RedwoodJS-based startups as well.
Can’t get enough of Between the Lines? Follow and connect with us on Twitter!
🍽️ BTL Snacks:
👁️ An Eye In The Sky….. The geospatial intelligence firm Orbital Insight, co-founded by Jeffrey Stein (CMC), is partnering with Satellogic to add high-frequency, high-resolution satellite imagery and full-motion video to its platform to give business and governments an eye in the sky view. Orbital Insight's platform can process a trillion pixels at once, using deep learning and AI to make sense of it all.
🧱 Brick & Mortar Inflection Point….. “With inflation at a 40-year high, we are at an inflection point right now for brick and mortar businesses, consumers, and our communities.” Upside (co-founded by HMCer Tom Vaughan) just rebranded and raised a $165M Series D to shake up retail with their two-sided marketplace platform that drives profit to businesses while also increasing users’ purchasing power.
🚖 GM Takes A 2 For 50 Bet….. General Motors expects to spend roughly $2B on autonomous vehicle company Cruise (co-founded by CMCer Dan Kan) during 2022. In GM’s view, however, that hefty expense will eventually have a payoff. The automaker has said it expects Cruise to bring in $50B in annual revenue by the end of the decade. Cruise just recently opened its driverless robotaxi operations to members of the public in San Francisco.
🥈 A Guide To Secondary Transactions….. Secondaries were not initially used in VC, since venture investors are primarily focused on funding the research and development of new products. But, as the venture asset class has expanded and more folks have gotten involved, the illiquid nature of venture investments has created an increased appetite for secondaries. Sydecar (co-founded by Claremont alumnus David Meister) shares more.
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