Patrick Awuah left a Microsoft career in Seattle to found Ashesi University in Ghana.
After eight years at Microsoft, Patrick Awuah moved home to Ghana in 1999 and founded Ashesi, a private non-profit university built to train ethical African leaders.
Patrick Awuah grew up in Accra and attended Achimota School. In 1985 he moved to the United States on a full scholarship to Swarthmore College and graduated in 1989 with degrees in engineering and economics. He then spent eight years at Microsoft as a software engineer and program manager.
A different plan
In 1997 he left Microsoft with a clear goal: to return to Ghana and educate the next generation of African leaders. He enrolled at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and wrote the business plan for Ashesi. With Nina Marini and other Berkeley students he travelled to Ghana for a feasibility study.
He graduated with an MBA in 1999, and that same year moved back to Ghana with his family to found Ashesi University, which was established in 2002 as a private, not-for-profit institution.
Recognition
Awuah received Ghana’s Order of the Volta in 2007, was named best social entrepreneur by the Schwab Foundation in 2014, and in 2015 was listed by Fortune among the world’s 50 greatest leaders and awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2017 he won the WISE prize for education.
His story answers a common founder question: can you leave a top job to build something slow and hard? He did, and he is still the president of the university he founded.
