About Us

Beginnings

The seed that grew into Burro was planted almost three decades ago, when Whit Alexander spent his junior year abroad studying at the Université Nationale de Côte d'Ivoire in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. During that time—and for several years after college when he worked as a consultant on various USAID and World Bank funded projects throughout West Africa—Whit began to see many unmet business opportunities. While countless volunteer organizations were working hard to develop innovative ways to better meet daily needs in Africa, virtually no one was building sustainable businesses around these innovations. No one working seriously on poverty alleviation seemed willing to make the leap and treat very low-income consumers with the respect accorded more wealthy consumers the world over.

But in some parts of the world, that was changing. In Bangladesh, economist Muhammed Yunus was developing his micro-finance model into the Grameen Bank lending small but crucial amounts of money to the rural poor so they could build businesses of their own. Grameen has now lent more than $6 billion to poor families and serves as a model for enabling micro enterprises in the developing world.

Soon other experts were weighing in on the subject of developing world entrepreneurship. The most influential voice was that of C.K. Prahalad, the Indian-born University of Michigan business professor who wrote a seminal book called The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Prahalad argued that Westerners needed to stop pitying the poor as victims and start respecting them as value-conscious consumers and small-scale entrepreneurs. He defined the bottom of the economic pyramid as those earning less than two dollars a day—some four billion people worldwide.

Meanwhile, Whit left Africa in 1987 to pursue a successful business career and raise a family at home in the United States. But in 2008, after selling his most recent entrepreneurial success, Cranium, he revisited his dream of creating a new type of enterprise in Africa.

That same year, Bill Gates addressed the Davos World Economic Forum on the subject of what he called "creative capitalism." In his speech, Gates called for businesses to develop innovative products that would serve consumers on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. He pointed out that charity wasn't enough to lift people in the developing world out of poverty. They needed the power of the marketplace to invent solutions that would improve their lives. "Sometimes market forces fail to make an impact in developing countries not because there's no demand, or because money is lacking, but because we don't spend enough time studying the needs and limits of that market," said Gates.

Whit saw that addressing some of those market limitations would require building trust in a new kind of brand that would focus on enhancing low incomes and providing better value than existing offerings. Better solutions to the daily challenges of living on a buck a day would be new and different. New solutions require thorough explanations, and who better to provide them, thought Whit, than an expanding network of trusted Burro resellers who would travel the last miles to even remote villages, offering Burro's quality goods and services at affordable prices, empowering low-income consumers to do more with their lives. Following months of further research into the market, Whit founded Burro in Ghana with this vision in September 2008.

Values

It might seem strange to talk about treating customers like grownups. But for many poor Africans, being treated with dignity and respected as valued clients is a new idea. We don't assume to know more than our customers, or know what's good for them. Because we are not giving them anything for free, we need to listen carefully to what they want, and then follow through, day after day.

Burro's core values are Respect, Innovate and Empower. We instill these values in our partners, employees, and resellers, who practice them every day—whether in the office, driving down a rutted dirt track, or sitting under a mango tree in a remote village waiting for the rain to break.

Who We Are

	Whit Alexander Whit brings to Burro more than 25 years' experience in product development, brand marketing, operations management and entrepreneurship including more than five years living and working throughout West Africa. Before founding Burro, Whit spent almost ten years as a leader in the board game industry—co-founding Cranium, developer of the smash hit Cranium party game, five-time Game of the Year winner at the New York Toy Fair, and one of the largest international game brands ever built before its sale to Hasbro in 2008. Prior to Cranium, Whit built and led the Microsoft team that created the Encarta World Atlas, the most detailed atlas that had ever been created, a content and technology leader that still forms the core of Microsoft mapping applications. Whit, who speaks fluent French, has a bachelor's degree in African Studies from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and has lived and worked throughout West Africa as a student, consultant, and entrepreneur. When not in Africa, he lives in Seattle with his wife Shelly Sundberg, a Program Officer for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and their two children. Email Whit
	Jan Watson With a proven track record of driving multi-million dollar improvements for dozens of companies, both as an executive and as a consultant, Jan brings exceptionally valuable operating skills to Burro. Jan joined Burro in October 2008 and is heading up the operation of the Ghana pilot branch. She developed the Burro financial and operating models and is leading our efforts to meet or beat the expectations it has established. Jan and Whit met when she was recruited to transform global operations at Cranium. Following award-winning success there, Jan was director of solution management at Microsoft, where she adapted a range of state-of-the-art techniques to support planning, procurement, material management, and cost forecasting for the XBOX 360, Zune and PC hardware business units. Jan studied mathematics at Washington State University and holds a master's in industrial engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When not living in Ghana, she and her partner, Leslie Phillips, who directs the pharmacy at Providence Medical Center, live in Medford, Oregon. Email Jan
	Tim Gamor Tim brings deep local expertise, entrepreneurial zeal, and passionate training skills to the Burro team. He operates a successful construction company in Ghana's capital of Accra and has weathered more trying conditions than most entrepreneurs can imagine. Tim also has extensive experience in natural resource related industries and has taught for several years at the university level. He comes from a royal family of the Ewe ethnic group from Ghana's Volta Region. Tim attended Accra's Achimota School, one of the most elite secondary schools in Africa, and then majored in biochemistry at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He went on to earn a master's degree in timber management. Tim speaks Ewe, Ga, and Twi fluently. He lives in Accra, Ghana with his five children and wife Shika Acolatse, the Ghana Country Director for Enablis, an organization supporting developing world entrepreneurs. Email Tim
	Rose Dodd Branch Development Manager, Rose Dodd, is a 2009 graduate of Ghana's renowned Ashesi University, the private liberal arts school founded by Patrick Awuah, an American-educated Ghanaian and former Microsoft engineer and program manager. At Ashesi, students balance a core curriculum of the classics and practical learning in business and entrepreneurship, with an emphasis on ethics. Rose grew up in Accra and has career aspirations in project management and is also interested in developing Ghana's tourism infrastructure. One very big project Rose hopes to spearhead someday, is an initiative to clean up the city's long stretches of Atlantic beach—and keep them that way. At Burro Rose manages a far-flung delivery route and helps oversee the company's promotional efforts. Rose speaks fluent Ga, Fante, Twi, and English and is rapidly learning Krobo, yet another of the many Ghanaian languages spoken by the clients of our Koforidua pilot branch.
	Michael Addae Financial Officer, Michael Addae, earned a degree in Accounting from Ho Polytechnic and has recently passed the Level III examinations of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana. Before coming to Burro he worked for several years as the Finance and Administrative Officer for Youth Empowerment Synergy (YES Ghana), the most extensive NGO run by and for youth in the country. YES Ghana brings together the relevant governmental, research, academic, and civil organizations to provide a foundation to ensure sustainable and productive futures for young people in Ghana. Michael is originally from Adaklu but grew up in Hohoe. He is an avid singer and was a choir leader in his former church at Hohoe. He speaks Ewe, Twi, and English.