Recent Grads
Ato K. B. Bentsi-Enchill ’17
I came to HWS out of a gap year in Ghana where I worked three internships: at a bank, at an investment consulting firm, and at an energy consulting firm. In many ways, I think I was more mature than many people coming to college, because I had lived on my own and I had that early sense of independence. I almost didn’t come to college because I believed I was making money and doing fine on my own, but my mom wasn’t having any of that. In retrospect, I realize that would’ve been a pretty bad idea. It was during that gap year, due to my internships, that I became really interested in entrepreneurship and building something from scratch.
In my early teens, I had done some informal business hawking snacks, clothes, etc., but as I grew older, I became more interested in building formal businesses on the African continent. So, coming into college, I knew right away that I would be moving back to Ghana to contribute my quota to our economic development through business. This played into the reason why I applied to the Stu Lieblein '90 Pitch Contest my first year because, to be honest, I was quite bored—I literally went from waking up at 6 a.m. and working until 9 p.m. to coming to college, having two or three classes a day and the rest of the day free. Eventually, I won The Pitch and $10,000 to start my first formal business.
Right now, I do a couple of things. I own a co-working space, 8 volta work spaces. I am a managing director at Black Adam Africa, a company that raises private equity or debt investments for African companies. I am also a principal at BBE Partners, which helps build a pipeline to the stock exchange for small and growing businesses in Ghana. This is all within the plan that I had to invest in African businesses. Business comes almost naturally for me, so I’m leveraging that and partnering with other people who have different strengths to create the best possible scenarios for these companies looking to raise growth capital. I help strengthen the business models and build the strategy for the companies while my partner, who is more numbers-oriented, ensures that the business case matches with the expected ROI of our investors.
I haven’t ever really had a formal job, apart from the internships during my gap year, but I’ve always been a go-getter in starting my own businesses. I’ve applied to jobs, but before the final interview I reflected on my situation and said to myself, “Look, if I’m going to be putting in all-nighters and be working this hard 24/7, I might as well be working for myself. I’m not going to be making a $100,000-120,000 while the people at the top are making $5-10 million in bonuses. And I’m not killing myself to be making $5-10 million bonuses for someone else, I want to be the person making the bonuses.” So I started my own thing and grew from there. I did all this with the full understanding that there was the possibility that nothing goes according to plan.
HWS Career Services was definitely helpful to me while on campus. Within the first week or two of my first year, I was in the office with Senior Associate Director of Career Services Jackie Doyle. I had a pretty solid resume because of my gap year and work experience, and I started looking for jobs and summer internships right from the first week of school. However, after the Pitch competition, RevisionPrep became my main focus.
I will continue to build companies. I am aiming to get my MBA from INSEAD and the African Leadership University School of Business. I believe I should be able to do that within the next five years, where I’ll refine my skills and build new businesses that are transforming from small and growing businesses to proper corporate entities. In the next five years, I will have listed a couple of companies on the stock exchange, both here in Ghana and on London’s AIM. I see a very bright future for myself. I have a lot of people backing me and I hope I can one day return to HWS possibly as a member of the Board of Trustees, to help drive inclusion and diversity at the Colleges.