Usap Zimbabwe Profiles
Since it's inception in 1999, Usap has helped tens of Zimbabwean students get accepted to top notch colleges in the United States. Some have since graduated and are working in various fields in the United States and elsewhere around the world and some have chosen to remain in academia at various instituations in the United States. There are over a hundred Usap students from Zimbabwe alone and each one of them has an amazing story to tell. Below are brief profiles of some of our students just to give you a glimpse of our diversity as a people as well as the diversity of our their career paths and futures.
| More Usap Zimbabwe profiles |
Rodney Manzanga
University of Pennsylvania '04
Rodney is an actuary with American International Group (AIG) in Wilmington, Delaware. Prior to joining AIG, he was an analyst with Ernst & Young LLP in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries. He holds the Professional Risk Manager charter of the Professional Risk Managers International Association (PRMIA) and is also a Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst (CERA).
Rodney was born and raised in Mberengwa as a herdboy. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with concentrations in Finance and Actuarial Science. He interned with Prudential Financial and Tillinghast-Towers Perrin. He was the Public Relations officer for both the Penn African Students Association (PASA) and Penn Arab Students Society (PASS) while in college. He started a math competition among eight primary schools in Mberengwa. He still sponsors the competition.
Andreata Muforo
Grinell College '04
Stanford Graduate School of Business '09
Andreata Muforo is currently a first year student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to business school, she worked in New York City for NERA Economic Consulting as an analyst.
Andreata was born in Zvishavane, Zimbabwe. With the help of USAP, she attended Grinnell College on a full scholarship. She majored in Economics and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. While in College, she interned with Citigroup, American Express and UBS with a desire to learn more about financial services and capital markets. Andreata is interested in financial services, business strategy and international economic development. In her spare time, Andreata enjoys cooking, local and international traveling and singing.
Memory Bandera
Mount Holyoke College '04
Suffolk University '06
Ms. Memory Bandera is a US-trained Zimbabwean whose specialty is in International Development. She is passionate about human rights and social and economic development issues. Currently, Ms. Memory Bandera is the Deputy Director-Programmes and Special Projects at the International Law Institute-African Centre for Legal Excellence (ILI-ACLE). She is responsible for the ILI-ACLE's ongoing technical assistance projects and advisory services. Currently she is administering the COMESA Enhancing Procurement Reform Capacity Project (EPRCP) in the 19 COMESA Member States; administering OSIEA-funded programmes on International Criminal Law; she is a course manager for the Danida Fellowship Centre program on Democracy, Human Rights and the Human Rights-based Approach to Development; and assists with implementation for Dfid-funded TIRI project towards strengthening the integrity of local council courts through rights-based training-of-trainers in Uganda towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Prior to joining ILI-ACLE, Ms. Bandera worked as the Regional Program Coordinator for East Africa with Youth Action International, a US-based NGO for three and half years. While at Youth Action International, her areas of specialization were Economic Development; Human Rights; Peace Building and Conflict Resolution. Ms. Bandera participated at various levels in the negotiation and implementation of a number of projects between Youth Action International and various professional partners at national and international level. Before that, she worked with the Marketing Science Institute in Boston, USA as a Publications, Research, and Membership Coordinator for two years.
Ms. Bandera is a founding member of the Girl Child Network (GCN) Zimbabwe, a charitable trust and network of girls that aims to give moral, educational, emotional, and financial support to underprivileged girls. In the past decade, the GCN Empowerment Model has been replicated in other countries and has helped millions of girls worldwide. As GCN Zimbabwe celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2009, she took it to Uganda and it is now a registered NGO in Uganda. Together with her fellow Mount Holyoke College alumnae, Jennifer Kyker, Ms. Bandera founded Tariro: Hope and Health for Zimbabwe's Orphans (Tariro) in 2003 to address the particular needs of Zimbabwean teenage girls. Young women are at highest risk for contracting HIV, yet many non-profits operating in Zimbabwe focus on younger children, leaving teenaged girls without the critical resources they need to obtain an education. In founding Tariro, Ms. Kyker and Ms. Bandera sought to redress this disparity by providing comprehensive educational support for teenaged girls, in order to enable them to finish a secondary school education and proceed to higher institutes of learning.
Ms. Bandera holds a Master of Science in International Relations from Suffolk University (2006), Boston and a Bachelor's degree from Mount Holyoke College (2004), in Massachusetts, USA.
| More Usap Zimbabwe profiles |