PLANTING THE SEEDS OF POSITIVE GROWTH
WZCC NY Chapter invited Mira Mehta to give a talk about her work in Nigeria
Mira is a fascinating social entrepreneur with an inspiring story to tell, including the following facets of her journey:
- brief background of how she was raised: values she learned from her parents and community, religious background, why those things matter in the context of what she does today.
- how she came to Nigeria for the first time, why she went to business school, and why she came back to Nigeria after business school.
- the business problem that Tomato Jos is trying to solve.
- the social problem that Tomato Jos is trying to solve.
- where we are today (what we’ve achieved so far) and where we’re trying to go next.
ABOUT MIRA MEHTA :
Mira Mehta attended Brown University, where she graduated with an honors degree in Community Health in 2006 and also earned an NCAA DIV l title in women’s rowing in 2004.
After graduating, she worked at BlackRock, for two years, as an analyst on a marketing and business development team focused on the retail market; Then in 2008 she joined the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) in Nigeria spending the next two years working with the Federal Ministry of Health HIV/AIDS Division, the US Government, and various UN organizations to forecast and import $20 million worth of HIV commodities into Nigeria, accelerate new drug approvals with regulatory bodies, and roll-out pediatric HIV testing, care and treatment operations in health clinics across the country. She then moved into a regional role, scaling up HIV diagnostic services in over 12 African countries, as governments began to take more financial responsibility for their national HIV care and treatment programs.
In 2012, Mira returned to the US to pursue an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she became actively involved in the Africa Business Club and began to develop a long-standing pipe dream to set up a tomato cannery in Nigeria. Shortly after graduating from HBS in 2014, Mira returned to Nigeria to start Tomato Jos, a for-profit social enterprise that makes high quality tomato paste for the West African market, using global best practices for farming and food processing, and sourcing tomatoes from small holder farmers in northern Nigeria.
