Chris joined the Foundation as president in the summer of 2021 after 17 years with African Leadership Academy (ALA), an educational institution based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
ALA seeks to transform Africa by identifying, developing, and connecting a pan-African network of leaders who can address the continent’s most significant challenges and opportunities. During Chris’s tenure, the institution admitted more than 1,300 students from 46 African countries, and its graduates accepted more than $136 million in scholarship funding to the world’s leading universities.
In 2006, he was named an Echoing Green fellow as one of the top “leading emerging social entrepreneurs in the world” for his work in Johannesburg.
Chris earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 2000, followed by a master’s in education and an MBA from Stanford University in 2003.
Before co-founding ALA, he worked in brand management at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio, and as a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group in Chicago and for The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation in Los Angeles. He also taught sixth-form (12th grade) students at Oundle School, a co-educational boarding and day school in Oundle, England.
Chris resides in Carrboro with his wife, Genevieve, and their two children, Naledi and Walter.