FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
My name is Molly and I am a product of defiantly brave choices that have been supported by an adamantly compassionate global village. I was born in Zimbabwe and raised speaking the Zezuru dialect of the Shona tribal people. I enjoyed a simple but nourishing childhood in the village community of Macheke. It was there that I cultivated the heart for the care & keeping of self, others, and the natural environment.
I left Zimbabwe on May 26, 1995 to pursue my college education in the USA, where I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering, from Drexel University. Drexel’s notable co-operative education program not only gave me an opportunity to test-drive my career, but also guided me to my role as a Systems Test Engineer at Lucent Technologies.
In 2009, I earned a Master of Science degree in Software Engineering from the exceptional Monmouth University. The comprehensive global-considerate campus culture there awoke something in me: I was training to be a leading software engineer in a world that also demanded my participation as an engaged planetary citizen. It is at Monmouth University that my collaboration with students, professors & administrators led to the establishment of the Macheke Sustainability Project. With an engineering spirit, I was led me to my next adventure – enrollment at the remarkable Prescott College where I earned a Ph.D. in Sustainability Education in 2014. During that time, I fostered my bio-medical engineering expertise at Angel Medical Systems – an outstanding start-up that invented the world’s first implantable cardiac ischemic monitor. I then moved to join Abbott’s Neuromodulation Field Clinical team in 2017 where I am immersed in the innovation of deep brain & spinal code stimulation therapies.
Indeed, I have traveled far academically and professionally. Yet it is my deep-seated compassion for others and an optimistic belief in my own capacity to be an agent of change, that I meet each day with an enthusiastic work ethic. My growing conviction is that I must make a meaningful contribution to the progress of the world I inherited from my ancestors. My generation’s legacy depends on it. What fears do I harbor? What are my habitual ways of interpreting things? Having done all I can, have I been willing to let go of the outcome?
In honor of this ongoing inquiry, I have been employing my leadership, creativity, and curiosity to investigate how views of economic poverty may overshadow the potential abundance of social & environmental capital in my native Zimbabwe. I aspire to publish what I have uncovered as it relates to my own experience of growing up in Zimbabwe and how this may contribute to a shift in the broader discourse of community development. But perhaps what’s paramount has been my growing achievement in resonant consciousness & deep regard for meeting others just where they have met themselves. I am grateful for my privilege, which is not devoid of suffering. May I remain rooted in humility & continue to develop with and in grace.