Ghanaian MacLean Sarbah, has landed at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world's largest charitable foundations, serving as the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Leader at the Global Health Office of the President.The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is an American private foundation founded by one of the World's richest men, Bill Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates.
Based in Seattle, Washington, it was launched in 2000 and is reportedly the second-largest charitable foundation in the world, holding $69 billion in assets as of 2020.This achievement, which ironically falls in line with Mac Sarbah's mission for social impact, would have remained a dream but for the determination and resilience of a young man to overcome the shackles of poverty and inequality at Yeji, a rural town in Ghana's Bono East Region.Life in rural Ghana like many parts of Africa, as against urban living, gives one an undue disadvantage in life's opportunities, leaving many behind life's race with unfulfilled dreams.However, Mac Sarbah, with the gift of a disciplinarian father who valued education amid destitution, learned the hard way, sometimes studying with kerosene lanterns without electricity through his primary and junior high school days.As a member of a family of eight children who shared a small room, Mac was certainly not born into luxury.
His days included waking up early in the mornings to fetch heavy loads of water at Volta Lake, several kilometres away from home.Mac, who was abandoned by his mother when he was less than two years old, described his father, who had no formal education, as a disciplinarian whose guidance shaped him academically in his early years."My father would sit in his armchair and watch me study from 7:00 to 10:00 pm.
Then I would wake up the next morning and do it all over again."MacLean Sarbah, affectionately called Mac, had to work harder by himself when his pillar of support, a disciplinarian father left Yeji to seek medical care after he was hit by a stroke just when Mac was about to enter Senior High School.Determined not to become a product of his environment, Mac commenced his secondary education first at the day Yeji Senior High Technical School before choosing to repeat form one at the Adidome Day Senior Secondary School in Ghana's Volta Region.