GSEC Day 5- Final Round and Awards Banquet

This has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

The teams were superb. I was very impressed and interested in my other teammates. I was especially impressed with my colleagues from Georgia. My new friend William Harper from the University of Georgia is also going to be operating in Africa, and we were talking to each other about the specific challenges that we were going to be facing in our businesses and how to address them. Mr. Harper is an MBA student and his business, Banque pour Tours, will be providing retail banking services in Mali using cell phone technology. I suggested that he seek a student based web team to develop his site. He promised to help me get in touch with an educational contact.

Talked briefly with one of the founders of KAITE, an organic farming company to be based in Zimbabwe. Linda Ramcke from Christian-Albrechts-Universitat in Germany did a superb presentation this morning that snagged her the grand prize of $5000.

After the dinner: I met with Dean Jim G. of the UW Business School. He has some high end contacts that he hopes to help us with. I also met one of the admissions officers of the Evans School of Public Affairs who wishes to help me with my graduate school application process.

I was contacted this morning by several key educational leaders from the Seattle area. Will be getting back to them ASAP.

Will write more tomorrow, need to get some sleep.

Laura Umetsu
Project Manager
International Leadership Academy of Ethiopia