Meet Zimbabwean Dr. Manyika who is onbe og Prez Obamas Advisors

Dr. James Manyika

United States president Barack Obama is reportedly getting advice from an advisory council that includes a Zimbabwean, Dr James Manyika. Dr Manyika is the Vice Chairman of the Global Development Council, which was set up by President Obama in 2012. 

Other members of the council include Mohamed El-Erian (Chair), Richard Blum, Esther Duflo, Gargee Ghosh, Sarah Degnan Kambou, John Norris, Alan Patricof, William Reilly, Steven Schwager, and Smita Singh.

According to the White House “the Global Development Council was created to inform and provide advice to the President and other senior U.S. officials on issues including: U.S. global development policies and practices, supporting new and existing public-private partnerships, and increasing awareness and action in support of development.”

Dr Manyika’s profile posted on the White House website says he is “the Director of the McKinsey Global Institute and a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company. Prior to joining McKinsey, Dr. Manyika served on the Engineering Faculty at Oxford University and was an elected Research Fellow at Balliol College at Oxford University.

“In 2011, Dr. Manyika was appointed to the Innovation Advisory Board at the Department of Commerce. He is a Trustee at the Aspen Institute and the World Affairs Council of California, and serves on the Advisory Boards of the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Information and Harvard University’s Hutchin’s Center and Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.

“He is a Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution and  member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Manyika was a Rhodes Scholar and received a B.S. from the University of Zimbabwe and an M.A., M.S., and D.Phil. from Oxford University.”