Stevenson is proud to announce that this year’s Samuel Kahn Award has been presented to Carolyn Bruckmann ’12. The Samuel Kahn Award was established in 1964 by Mrs. Rosalind Kahn in honor of her husband Samuel, an engineer and former owner of the Market Street Railway Company in San Francisco. The Kahn Award is given each year to a member of the RLS 10th Reunion Class who exemplifies the values the School has taught from its founding: to do one’s best, to pursue one’s passion, and to serve others. Carolyn receives the award just as she concludes her work with One Acre Fund, a non-profit social enterprise that helps address hunger and poverty at a global scale by providing resources and training to local farmers across Africa.

After three years working for One Acre Fund (OAF) in two different regions of Africa, Carolyn will return to the US for graduate school this fall. During her tenure with OAF, she helped local farmers and communities across the continent build sustained, long-lasting pathways to economic security.

After graduating from Stevenson and then Harvard, she became interested in learning more about global inequality. She knew that someday, she would want to pursue a career that would help address socioeconomic issues in the developing world. But she also felt like she needed to strengthen her business and analytical skills to prepare for that work. So, she accepted a job offer in consulting with Bain, which helped her gain additional experience with quantitative, structured problem-solving.

During her time at Bain, Carolyn held a 6-month externship at the Gates Foundation. There, she worked to improve the process of delivering health commodities in emerging markets—specifically East Africa. After a trip to Rwanda in 2019, Carolyn knew th
at she wanted to tackle the problem of inequality head-on. She applied to work for OAF, and accepted a position working directly under the organization’s CEO in Rwanda. After moving to East Africa, she helped OAF by completing a variety of strategic projects, including creating a 5-year growth plan for the organization and developing a variety of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. In 2021, Carolyn transferred to a different position at the organization, overseeing one of the operations of the organization in a specific region in Kenya.

In the job she is just wrapping up, Carolyn has overseen the OAF client experience for more than 140,000 farmers. She also manages the performance of about 600 field staff. She spends about half her time focused on strategy (e.g. how to increase the impact each farmer can make and how to enroll more farmers); a third of her time on day-to-day organizational operations (e.g. ensuring the team in the field has what they need to market to and enroll farmers); and the rest of her time on directly managing her team and visiting field sites in person (e.g. going out to farms to see how things are going). She explains that the work has been fulfilling, especially since OAF typically sees the yield of every farmer they help increase by around 50%.

After three years of working abroad, Carolyn decided that she was ready to head back to the US to pursue more education. She explains that she’s learned invaluable, unforgettable lessons during her time with OAF–in part because OAF’s reach extends far beyond simply increasing the number of crops a farmer can produce. It transforms the lives of people, generations down the line. She adds, “My favorite part about the work has been being so close to where the impact happens! I live in Kakamega, Kenya, and get to spend part of my time out in the field meeting with field team members and farmers. I love meeting with farmers and hearing how OAF has changed their lives by simply increasing the amount of money they have. They can use that income in a variety of important ways; for example, to spend on their children’s education or to invest in creating a business, etc.”

Next year, Carolyn will pursue a dual graduate degree in business and public policy (an MBA-MPP) at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and either Harvard Business School or Stanford Graduate School of Business. Carolyn then hopes to help reduce economic inequality in the US in some way—potentially by coming up with different ways to reform workforce development. However, she explains that she has no set idea of what the next step in her adventure is, and she feels similar to how she did when she was in her first position at Bain: open to wherever her journey may take her.

Carolyn’s work exemplifies all that the Samuel Kahn award aims to recognize: a dedication to hard work, a pursuit of her passion, and work that improves the lives of others.