Nat Robinson ’03 lives by three values: don’t be afraid of what you don’t know, learn quickly, and give back to make the world a better place. “It’s how you contribute to humanity and society,” he says. “I feel like I got a lot of that from CC.”
It was a Semester at Sea experience that opened Robinson’s eyes to poverty. “I knew I needed to use my Economics degree to do something to help the world,” he says. Robinson is now a social entrepreneur, pioneering companies that transform the lives of impoverished global communities.
After graduating, Robinson worked at the El Pomar Foundation, where he helped rural communities across Colorado. “Mike Edmonds was a mentor of mine…I have him to thank,” he says. “I remember walking by his office my senior year and he said, ‘Nat, what are you doing with your life?’” Edmonds encouraged Robinson to apply for the foundation’s fellowship.
At El Pomar, Robinson had the opportunity to meet world leaders and noticed how businesses were sometimes missing in nonprofit community work. He wanted to find a way to get more businesses involved in poverty alleviation, so he decided to go to business school.
“[Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know, learn quickly, and give back to make the world a better place.] It’s how you contribute to humanity and society. I feel like I got a lot of that from CC.”
Nat Robinson ’03
Edmonds suggested Robinson look at schools in the south, so he applied to Vanderbilt. There, he initiated a multidisciplinary group, Project Pyramid, that brought students together to work on solutions for poverty. Eighteen years later, it is known as the Turner Family Center for Social Ventures. Robinson then moved to Washington, D.C., for a job as a management consultant with Accenture, where he got on a project to help a bank in Kenya expand a rural agricultural microfinance program.
“It was an eight-month project through a group at the World Bank and I thought, ‘Wow, eight months is a long time to be in Kenya,’” Robinson says. Seven years later, Juhudi Kilimo Company, which provides micro-asset financing to tens of thousands of rural farmers in Kenya, was born. “We can go into these remote, rural, low-income communities and provide loans in a very responsible way that helps the farmers generate income and pull themselves out of poverty,” Robinson says.
Robinson wrote a book, Creating a Cash Cow in Kenya, about his experiences. “We learned a lot, the hard way,” he says. “The focus of the book was to show all the mistakes I made…but also to inspire, and hopefully help, others around the world to be able to start a business. There is a stream of that within CC. Giving back, whether it’s to the environment or to the community.”
After returning from Kenya, Robinson co-launched Leaf Global Fintech, a blockchain tech startup that allows refugees and migrants to access money through their phones, rather than carrying cash. The company was recently acquired by the publicly traded money remittance company, IDT.
What’s next for this entrepreneur? He utilized his JD from Vanderbilt to win his first pro-bono asylum case in Denver for a refugee client. He also is running ultramarathons and creating a climate tech start-up to help farmers in Africa remove carbon from the atmosphere.