Njideka Harry

Harry was born in Ibadan to a Nigerian father and American mother.[1] When the Biafra war broke out, her father won a scholarship to study in the United States which is where he met and married her mother.[2] She earned her Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance and Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[2][3] After graduating, she began working for General Electric, and lived/worked in Europe and in the U.S. [2] Harry left GE and began a career at Microsoft, where she founded YTF in 2000.[2] Youth for Technology Foundation is a nonprofit that uses technology to improve the lives of young people and women in developing countries.[4] Harry is particularly worried about the state of education in Africa as the system is not just broken, but obsolete. She envisions technology as an enabler.[5][6] She is married to Telema Udemezue Harry, with whom she has three daughters.

Harry founded Youth for Technology Foundation in 2001, funded by the Nigerian Government Community Investment Fund and Microsoft Community Affairs Program.[2] She began a Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship at Stanford University in 2004. She worked alongside Megan Smith.[2] Harry was invited to join the Board of the Community Technology Centers Network, where she would meet her mentors Don Samuelson and Stephen Ronan.[2] She earned a Master of Business Administration at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.[2][7] She was inspired by fellow MBA classmates to extend the YTF to Colombia.[2] YTF Academy teaches youth and women to use technology in education and entrepreneurship.[2] In 2007, YTF began working in the technology and entrepreneurship space when the organization partnered with the United Nations Development Programme to launch a program to train women entrepreneurs in the Niger Delta in Nigeria.[2]

In 2011 she was nominated into the prestigious Ashoka Fellowship as an Ashoka Fellow.[8] She launched the Women Entrepreneurs and Mobile Value Added Services in 2012 which provides funding, training and networking opportunities to thousands of young women.[2] The program is supported by Mastercard.[2] She partnered with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women in 2013. Harry's efforts have reached almost 1.4 million youth and women over two decades.[9] YTF is empowering the next generation of leaders to enter the workforce with the skills they need to access employment or create their own entrepreneurial opportunities.  

Harry is passionate about emerging technologies, including 3D printing.[10] She launched 3D Africa, an educational program that provides training for unemployed African engineers, in 2015.[11] The engineers learn skills in computer-aided design, robotics, IoT, programming and entrepreneurship.[12] The program has been funded by several organizations including GE, Makerbot, Autodesk and WeTech (Women Enhancing Technology).[13] Recognizing that girls were reluctant to commit to the after school clubs, Harry launched "3D Africa for Girls" to teach girls human centered design and production.[14] The Clinton Global Initiative selected YTF as a commitment partner (Clinton Foundation) in 2016 to launch an initiative providing training to 6,000 girls who are out-of-school in Nigeria.[15] YTF is collaborating with schools in Nigeria and Kenya to develop physical and virtual maker spaces that allow young entrepreneurs to prototype their ideas through 3D Africa clubs.[16]

In 2016, Harry expanded her work to the United States with the Founding of 3D Printing Academy for Girls in West Louisville, an education technology start-up. 3DPAG inspires under-represented Middle School age girls to pursue STEAM education and careers. Harry received the Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau Gender Equity Award in November 2019. The Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau Gender Equity Award from the University of Louisville Women’s Center honors UofL community members whose work has directly furthered gender equity. This award is named after Dr. Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau, constitutional scholar, the first woman to serve as chair of the UofL History Departments, and the first woman chair of the faculty senate http://kgsc.org/2019/11/njideka-harry-2019-tachau-gender-equity-award/

Harry is on the advisory board of the council for Women of West Africa and Entrepreneurship and Promoting Readiness in Science and Math.[17][18][19][20] She is a World Economic Forum Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship Fellow.[9][16][21][22][23] Njideka has served as a strategy consultant to leading startups, nonprofits, foundations and companies with a social mission.  She is on the “Civil Society and the Future of Work” council at the World Economic Forum, the Advisory Council for the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) and the Global Technology Advisory Council for TWINTech.  Njideka is a member of the panel of experts on the Education Index with the Legatum Institute, a London- based think tank. Njideka has a global reputation as a thought leader on matters related to the fourth industrial revolution and the future of work. Her work has been published in 100 articles, 20 papers and she has been invited as a key note speaker and / or panelist in over 15 countries.