I'm Brad Smith, and this is Tools and Weapons.
On this podcast, I'm sharing conversations with leaders who are at the intersection of the promise and the peril of the digital age. We'll explore technology's role in the world as we look for new solutions for society's biggest challenges.
I always say we have two ears and one mouth, which probably means we should be listening about double the time that we're talking, and I always have led by asking questions.
That's Meg Whitman, the successful business and nonprofit leader who's now serving as the United States ambassador to Kenya. Her hallmark, bias for action, is driven by a simple question: What are we going to do about this? In this episode, she shares how her mother's experience of becoming a certified mechanic during World War II instilled in her the courage to take on big challenges. We talk about what it takes to be an effective leader in building bridges and how Kenya, filled with entrepreneurial spirit, has become East Africa's new Silicon Savanna, giving it an incredibly bright future. My conversation with Meg Whitman, coming up next on Tools and Weapons.
Well, United States ambassador to Kenya, Meg Whitman, thank you for joining me. I think you have one of the extraordinary careers of, frankly, any business leader or just any leader of our generation. It's an extraordinary story that has brought you from growing up in New York to adulthood in California to now East Africa as US ambassador to Kenya. Is that a course in your life that you would've envisioned a decade ago, living with your husband, working in Nairobi?
No. Well, first of all, Brad, thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be on Tools and Weapons. I'll tell you a funny story. The embassy saw in my calendar Tools and Weapons, and they said, 'What is that? We like the tools part. We don't like the weapons part.'
So it made everyone nervous.
No, it's Brad Smith from Microsoft. It'll be fine. But I'm delighted to be here. No, you know, I never thought I would live in Nairobi. I didn't know much about Africa. I hadn't thought much about Africa, but it's been a fantastic and really interesting experience.
What has most surprised you in your work as United States ambassador there?
Yeah, well, I think so much of this is new for me. So I never have worked for the United States government before, and I'm now a government employee. I've never lived outside the United States for an extended period of time. I spent three months in China, but I've never lived outside the United States, and that's always interesting, and, you know, didn't know much about Africa. Had been to Kenya a couple of times, but, you know, understanding the Kenyan government, understanding Kenyan politics, Kenyan culture, has been fascinating, and I think the thing that has really surprised me is how dynamic Africa is and, in particular, the dynamism of Kenya. I think the narrative in the United States and maybe even in Europe about Africa is there's not a lot going on here. There's, you know, some real challenges on the continent, and actually, there's a lot going on here, and so I've really started to put together a narrative of why should American businesses invest in Africa and why specifically Kenya, and it's been a really interesting time.
Well, I think it's fantastic, in part because I think that Kenya really is such a center for technology innovation. It's become a hub for activity. I wanna dive into all of that, but before we get to that, while it may seem unusual, in some ways, I would say I think it sort of runs into your family to go to unusual places and do unusual things. So I wanna start a little bit with your own story. Let's begin with maybe your mother who I might even refer to as mom who became a mechanic. Tell us how that happened. Tell us that story.
Well, my mom was born in a different generation. She was born in 1920 and lived almost 90 years and was always an adventurer. You know, she played girls organized sports before there were girls organized sports, but during World War II, she wanted to join the war effort, and there weren't a lot of roles for women. So she went to the Red Cross. She was living in Boston and said, 'I'd like to help,' and they said, 'Great news, this class of women, we'd like to send you to the South Pacific, and this is where you can be of the most use.' So she got on a troop ship 30 days to the South Pacific, and she gets to the base camp, you know. There's a thousand women on this ship, and the commander says, 'What we really need is airplane mechanics and truck mechanics,' and my mother, I promise you, had never looked under the hood of anything, and she said, 'Well, that's where the need is greatest. That's what I'll do,' and four years later, she was a fully certified airplane mechanic and a fully certified truck mechanic. You know, I have an older brother, older sister. She said to us growing up, 'If I can figure out how to be a mechanic, you guys can do anything.'
I think that's a wonderful inspiration, and she not only inspired you with her own experience and her words, but literally, she showed all three of you the country. Can you share a little bit of that experience? What was it like?
Well, when I was five going on six, and my older brother was eight years older than I am, my older sister, six years, she got together with her very best friend, and they took eight children under the age of 13 on a three-month camping trip through the United States in a Ford Econoline van with the pop-up, you know, where you could sleep in at night, and so we didn't stay in a hotel for three months. We camped in every major national park, and it really shaped my love for the outdoors, my love for, you know, being outdoors and obviously now conservation. But she showed us the United States of America over one summer, and the dads who had to work, the dads came in for two weeks during the summer, and the rest of the time, two women and eight kids under the age of 13. Can you imagine?
That is hard to imagine, but it's a wonderful experience and opportunity and I just think a great role model.
Yeah, it shaped me, and it shaped my brother and sister, too. I mean, we got to see the country as very few people in that day and age did and, you know, really made us appreciate the natural beauty and the incredible resources that this country has.
Did growing up in that environment give for you a bit of a bias for the action that has always been one of your hallmarks?
I think probably so, but I also think it probably is just innate, you know? There are people who just have to get stuff done, and I was probably one of those people growing up. I was a competitive swimmer, you know, did well academically, but it's so interesting here now working for the State Department because my question is often, 'And what are we going to do about it?'
So let's go there. How does the State Department think about action?
Well, carefully, and I think that's appropriate, Brad, in many ways because what you don't wanna do is inadvertently create an international incident. And so there is an art and a craft to diplomacy, which I have, you know, really had to learn in the last year. I've been here just over a year. I came August 4th or August 1st, a year ago, and then how they think about, you know, bringing in all the constituencies. I mean, it is something that we do in business, but in the end, in business, the CEO makes the decision ultimately, and then the organization is expected to march forward, and that's a little bit different because you've got so many different constituencies. You've got the United States. You've got different agencies in the United States government.
What is it like to lead an embassy when you have people from so many different parts of the United States government?
Well, I have 34 different agencies here in Nairobi. This is the 10th largest embassy in the world, and, as I said, I've got State Department employees, I've got Department of Defense, USAID. I have TSA. I'm the head of TSA here today. I've got, you know, Population Refugees and Migration. I've got everybody, and it's fascinating 'cause you really do see the challenge of knitting together all these different agencies and how you work as one team in Embassy Nairobi. But what's true, Brad, is while I am the coordinator for these 34 agencies, they all report up through their vertical line. So the DOD, the defense attache reports to the DOD, right? The State Department people all report up through the State Department. The Population and Refugee Migration group, they go up through that group. I've got the United States Department of Agriculture here. They report up through there. I've got a treasury attache. So in our language, it's a matrix organization, and, as you know from business, matrix organizations sometimes work in private firms and sometimes don't, but it works. You know, I have to worry about inter-agency coordination.
It's obviously very different from being the CEO of a company, and you've done that in different companies so well. Have you had to change your leadership style to lead this kind of matrix team?
A little bit, certainly. There's some commonalities here, which is what's the strategy? What are we trying to get done here? You know, I thought one of Satya's most brilliant moves when he became CEO of Microsoft was cloud first, mobile first. Everyone understood it. The organization knew how to run after that focused areas, and I think most of us in business believe focus is really important. So I've tried to focus on achieving a small number of things, doing 100% on a small number of things as opposed to 50% on many things. So that's true. What's different is, in business, we pick our teams, don't we?
I don't pick my teams. I mean they, they arrive, and I'm like, 'Hey, how you doing?' So that's been a difference, but focus, accountability, making progress, you know, communicating that is all similar to business. What's different, as I said, is it takes a little bit longer. There's different levels of approval that, particularly for some things, have to be obtained, either within the embassy or in Washington. So it's been different. It's been different, but I've enjoyed it, and, you know, again, more commonalities than differences, and you just have to be aware of, you know, when in Rome, you gotta do a little bit like the Romans do.
Well, let's talk about Kenya. It's such an extraordinary country. People I think in the United States or in Europe may think first and foremost about the geography, the nature, the preservation of that nature, but let's start with the people. You've noted quite rightly that Africa is the world's youngest continent. In some ways, maybe it's the oldest continent and the youngest continent at the same time. We've definitely found this at Microsoft. As you know, we have a large development center in Nairobi, more than 500 people. Tell us what you have found when it comes to Kenya, the people, and what it means for technology in particular.
Well, Kenya, as most of your listeners will know, is in East Africa. It's on the Indian Ocean. The Port of Mombasa is the main entry point for goods and services coming through East Africa. It's a gateway to 500 million people. Kenya is a population of 55 million, a very young country, much like all of Africa, but I will say it is a very entrepreneurial culture. Kenyans know how to get things done and they work very hard. It is English speaking because Britain was the colonial power here for so many years. The education system is strong, both primary, secondary, and tertiary education, and they have become the tech center of East Africa, and I would say largely because of M-Pesa. M-Pesa was developed in 2007 by Kenyans, and three years later, it was the largest mobile money network in the world, and what Kenya did is they went from cash to mobile money. They skipped over credit cards, checks, money orders, you name it. They skipped over all of that and now is over a billion dollars in revenue, over $350 billion in total payment volume, seven countries, and this is the amazing thing, about 60% of Kenya's GDP goes through M-Pesa.
That then created an ecosystem of FinTech, agrotech, all kinds of different, you know, technology, full stack engineering, development centers, as you said, that Microsoft has there, and it has now the most robust venture capital community in East Africa. Nigeria has more venture capital, but as a percentage of GDP, Kenya is larger and growing faster and then also has a couple of very good universities that have anchored the technology community here, and then frankly, Safaricom, which owns M-Pesa, and then some of the big American tech companies have done what HP did in Silicon Valley many years ago, which is seed talent to the startups. So there's quite a robust startup community here, and I think Kenya is certainly the tech leader in East Africa and could well be in a couple years the tech leader in all of Africa 'cause they have by far and away the most developed ecosystem. They call it Silicon Savanna.
