Stanford Seed Enlists Alumni Coaches in Addressing Global Poverty
Frank Omondi, CEO of Ten Senses Africa in Kenya, is one of hundreds of entrepreneurs who have benefited from the Stanford Seed Transformation Program. In this photo, Omondi displays the macadamia nuts that are at the core of his business. | Photo by Louis Nderi
Stanford Seed deploys alumni volunteers to help companies in emerging economies expand their businesses.
Frank Omondi was managing director of Ten Senses Africa, a fair trade cashew and macadamia nut processing company based in Nairobi, Kenya. He faced a dilemma: He knew he needed to become a better businessman — his training was in wildlife biology — but he couldn’t afford to abandon his nut company for two years to get an MBA.
Ten Senses’ value proposition is simple: “We work with farmers with small pieces of land,” Omondi says. “We buy macadamia and cashew nuts and process them in a big factory in Nairobi, and then export the product to the U.S. and Europe.”
The company’s biggest challenge was erratic cash flow, which Omondi struggled to address. “Cash is king,” he says. “When there’s no cash, there’s no music, and when there’s no music, you get off the dance floor.” No cash meant no nuts, resulting in unfulfilled orders and calls from angry customers. The cash flow problems also trickled down to the 10,000 farmers supplying Ten Senses with its product.
Then, Omondi met Nancy Glaser, MBA ’85, who calls herself “the cash-flow queen.” Glaser became his business coach within the Seed Transformation Program (STP) from Stanford Seed, which enlists alumni, faculty, students, and staff to help companies in emerging economies expand their businesses — with the goal of creating jobs and lifting people out of poverty.
STP is a one-year certificate program from Stanford GSB that operates in East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa, and India. It provides management training, one-on-one support, and networking opportunities to growth-minded business leaders.
After joining the Seed Transformation Program and working with Glaser, his alumni coach, Omondi led Ten Senses to double its sales, providing 1 million cashew seedlings to support 30,000 local farmers and employing 600 people, two-thirds of whom are single mothers. The company was able to expand to Tanzania with the support of the Seed Transformation Network, a group composed of past participants in the program.
Ten Senses is among the hundreds of companies that have received guidance from the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies, known as Stanford Seed. The list of participants is long and diverse. A metal fabricator in Ghana. A mobile banking app in Côte d’Ivoire. A dry cleaner in Nigeria. An engineering firm in Botswana. A juice business in Sierra Leone. A pharmaceutical chain in Uganda. A high-tech consultancy in India. A nut producer in Kenya.
“Taking a company from 50 or 100 employees up to 1,000 employees requires a very specific skill set,” says Stanford GSB professor Jesper B. Sørensen, who serves as Seed’s faculty director. “We focus on helping leaders work through the challenges of doing that.”
“Our value proposition,” adds Stanford Seed Executive Director Darius Teter, “is that we bring Stanford to you.”
Frank Omondi is just one entrepreneur who has taken his Seed learnings to not only boost his business, but to improve the lives of others. Today, Frank is sharing his business expertise as CEO of a social and climate justice program called Grow Fairly, which works to provide smallholder farmers with fair access to global markets.
Says business coach Nancy Glaser: “Seed has made me realize that it’s never too late to take your business skills to a place where they’ll be highly valued.”
