“My two years at Berkeley Haas were two of the best of my life,” Charlene says. “The courses I was able to take were huge inspirations for dedicating the past 13 years of my career to social entrepreneurship and investment in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

In addition to courses like “International Business Development” and “Market-Based Approaches for Reducing Poverty,” Charlene notes her summer internship as seminal experiences. That internship took her on another path almost 7,400 miles away to Ghana. Charlene ended up living and working in social entrepreneurship roles in Africa for a decade.

Before Haas, Charlene attended Duke University, majoring in psychology and computer science — a natural mix for someone interested in people and entrepreneurship — and worked as an IT consultant at Delotte. After earning her M.B.A. at Cal, Charlene spent four years working for social enterprises in East Africa and then co-founded and served as chief operating officer of a cross-border payments company called BitPesa (now AZA Finance). She is a co-founder of Operations Nation, a global community of operations professionals. And in 2023, she will become the executive director of a foundation called Ezrah Charitable Trust.

It’s important to Charlene to give back to areas of campus that have allowed her to fulfill her interests in social entrepreneurship. Among several funds at Berkeley Haas that she supports is the Haas Social Impact Fund that provide grants to first-year, full-time M.B.A. students who accept summer internships in the social sector. Nonprofit, government, and social impact organizations usually don’t have much, if any, budget to hire M.B.A. interns, Charlene points out.

“This subsidy is what allowed me to do [that] summer internship in Ghana,” Charlene says. “My hope is that many other Haas students would likewise have the opportunity to make a huge social impact both domestically and across the globe.”

And support from alums and friends is more critical than ever, says Charlene.

“As a public university, UC Berkeley doesn’t have the same level of endowment that private universities do, and support helps ensure the university can attract the professors and researchers that make it a center of academic excellence.”

Charlene says her favorite memory at Berkeley is when Barack Obama won his first presidential election in 2008.

“It seemed like the entire university rushed to the center of campus to celebrate. I’ve never seen that many people so happy since the men’s basketball team at Duke won the 2001 NCAA National Championship during my sophomore year in undergrad!”