Congratulations to all the athletes who represented their countries with honor - whether they won a medal or not!

Kelly Brock has been a member of Africans at Microsoft for almost a year, and in that time has been a driving force behind our engagement with communities of former African refugees in the Puget Sound area.

Kelly traveled to Minnesota this weekend to attend the commencement ceremony for her MBA from Capella University, and was thrilled to have her commencement address by Eddie Glaude, Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University and senior fellow at The Jamestown Project.

Congratulations Kelly, we're proud of you and appreciate the work you do on behalf of our local community of former refugees!

Roger is a former African refugee from a U.N. camp Mtabila, in Tanzania, who was resettled in the US at age 22, with the assistance of the International Rescue Committee, in partnership with the UNHCR United Nations High Commission of Refugees.

While in the camp, Roger helped his fellow Burundian refugees with reading, writing and math, and was considered a great teacher. Currently Roger works night shift as a dishwasher in Seattle to pay back his airfare (one of the conditions of resettlement). This leaves him little time to attend school to improve his English and means he has a tough road ahead of him.

Innocent Ndimubanzi, who is leading the Africans at Microsoft v-team focused on finding ways to empower and enable former African refugees in the Puget Sound region, learned that Roger was engaged to be married to another former African refugee and pulled together a team to help with the wedding. Innocent and his team arranged for transportation, food, drinks, and a social event after the wedding, while Kelly made a wedding cake.

Almost 100 people attended the wedding, in which Roger married his fiancee Anesie, who looked simply elegant in a traditional American wedding dress.  Roger and Anesie exchanged vows in English and Swahili with their rings, and even fed each other wedding cake.  The wedding was great fun and a memorable experience.  The reception food was donated by members of the community who cooked the night before. 

Congratulations to Roger and Anesie on the start of your new lives together! We wish you all the best as you face and conquer the challenges ahead, and we hope you can take advantage of all the opportunities America has to offer!

More about African Refugees in the Puget Sound area:

Several Africans at Microsoft have been reaching out to the former refugees in the Puget Sound area and helping where they can - there is quite a large community of former refugees in the area and they face a number of challenges in assimilating to their new home: transportation, affordable housing, employment and education being among the most pressing.

Resettled refugees like Roger are encouraged to find employment as soon as possible to to pay the aid agencies back for their air tickets to the US, however this often results in the first vicious cycle they have to fight: without strong English language skills they are required to take jobs as unskilled laborers, working difficult shifts that impact their ability to attend community college ESL (English as a Second Language) courses. You can see the catch 22 immediately - without English they can't improve their job prospects, but they can't prioritize English lessons unless they give up work or find a better job...

This is one of the areas that Africans at Microsoft is looking to impact as we partner with appropriate organizations and continue to integrate with the former refugee community. As a result of efforts earlier this year by Kelly Brock, another African at Microsoft, two former refugees (Emmanuel and Meckson) were hired by Microsoft's Dining Services vendor earlier this year and as we move forward we hope to connect more people in the community with employment opportunities like these.

Learn more

• Seattle Government Immigrants and Refugee Initiative
• What does the IRC do in the Seattle area?
• Refugee Council USA
• Raise awareness
• Donate or work for the UNHCR
• Donate or volunteer with IRC (International Rescue Commission) 
• Donate or volunteer with the Refugee Women's Alliance

We will be publishing a series of posts on refugee issues moving forward, as we continue to define and drive outreach and assistance to the community in our area.

So a trillion must have 12 zeros. A billion must have 9 zeros. And we think it's hard in the US, figuring out the correct amount to tip!

This sign is from the restaurant at the Meikles Hotel in Harare:

For those of you who are interested -

Togo has been competing in the Summer Olympics since 1972. Not until this week, though, did the small West African nation finally win a medal, when Benjamin Boukpeti took home the bronze in the men’s single kayak slalom. His achievement was unexpected; going into the event, Boukpeti was ranked only 56th in the world. But as he reached the finish of the white-water course, the crowd loudly cheered him on and he paddled into third place with a combined time of 173.45 seconds. The victory so excited Boukpeti that he snapped his paddle in half. “I’ve got a massive party ahead of me,” he said.

Source: The Week

Kenya is leading the African medal tally today, with 8 medals all up (2 gold, 4 silver and 2 bronze - all in track and field), followed by Zimbabwe (4); Ethiopia (3); Algeria (2) and Cameroon, Tunisia, South Africa and Togo (1 each). 

Zimbabwe has won four Olympic medals in Beijing, a gold and three silver - and all of them (including a couple of world record times) have been delivered by one athlete: swimmer Kirsty Conventry.

Coventry won Zimbabwe's first swimming Olympic medals in Athens in 2004 - a gold a silver and a bronze - accounting for the nation's total winnings, prompting the people of Zimbabwe to dub her a "national treasure." This time around, she's continued her trend, adding a medal and ditching bronze for silver.

Hopefully Kirsty's performance can give Zimbabweans a taste of optimism and civic pride in the face of the country's economic woes and recent political turmoil.

Zimbabwe currently leads the medal tally for African nations at the Beijing Olympics with four medals but with track and field events started, expect some changes: Ethiopia has three medals so far (two gold and a silver in track and field events), Kenya also has three medals (two silver and a bronze, also in track and field), Algeria has two (both in Judo) while Cameroon and Togo both have one each (a gold in track and field and a bronze in canoe/kayak, respectively).

From http://icanhascheezburger.com

Zimbabwe's golden girl Kirsty Coventry is at it again, setting a new world record in the women's 100m backstroke Monday with a time of 58.77 seconds in the semi-finals at the Beijing Olympics.

We'll be cheering her on in the finals! You can check out her swim at www.nbcolympics.com - the video is here (tip: download Silverlight for the best experience).

Kirsty also won a silver medal in the Women's 400M Individual Medley Final yesterday.

AFP: Coventry breaks women's 100m backstroke world record

Africans at Microsoft is committed to raising awareness of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa, and to helping those affected by AIDS. Now we're extending that commitment to people of African descent generally. Today, we want to draw your attention to the AIDS epidemic killing African Americans - a crisis proportionate to that faced by some notoriously AIDS-ridden African countries.

It's no secret that people of African descent represent a disproportionate share of the world's AIDS cases, but people have generally assumed that this is strictly an African continent issue.

• True, UNAIDS reports that almost 2 million people were newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2007, bringing the total infected population to 22 million.
• True, this region now accounts for two thirds of the 32.9 million people known to be living with HIV world wide.
• True, last year, 75% of AIDS deaths occurred in the sub-Saharan region of Africa.
• The proportions are staggering: just 10% of the world's population accounts for 67% of HIV and 75% of AIDS deaths.

But what about people of African descent in America?

• In the US, just over a million people are living with HIV or AIDS - admittedly a lot less than the 22 million in sub-Saharan Africa.
• But according to the Center for Communicable Diseases (CDC), almost half of those are African American.
• The proportions are no less staggering than in Africa: less than 13% of the US population accounts for almost 50% of newly diagnosed HIV infections.

The AIDS epidemic in black America is as severe as in parts of Africa! In fact, in Washington DC, more than 80% of HIV cases are among black people - "five percent of the entire DC population is infected... that's comparable to countries like Uganda or South Africa"!

AIDS is the leading cause of death among black women between ages 25 and 34 and the second-leading cause of death among black men of the same demographic.

AIDS activists are lobbying the US government for more focus on addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic amongst African Americans, calling for for the government to commit $1.3 billion annually to HIV prevention. But all the government money in the world won't make a bit of difference if African Americans don't start acknowledging the problem, taking steps to prevent it and getting tested regularly to ensure early detection and treatment if prevention fails.

Gary Bell, Executive Director of Philadelphia HIV/AIDS case management agency BEBASHI notes that "African Americans don't want to think about AIDS, talk about AIDS, have anything to do with AIDS -- and consequently avoid anything having anything to do with AIDS, including giving support..." - even though prominent people like Barack Obama, Californian Representative Barbara Lee,  and actress/singer Sheryl Lee Ralph have repeatedly urged African-Americans to talk openly about AIDS prevention.

In too many cases, people aren't getting tested, or are getting tested late, so HIV infection goes undetected until the person actually gets sick with AIDS - by which time it's exponentially more difficult, if not impossible, to successfully treat and manage.

People need to take ownership and accountability for their health - education is the key to prevention and testing is the key to early detection and successful treatment. It is critical that African Americans put aside social stigmas and preconceptions, and start facing the AIDS crisis head on - ignorance and misplaced shame are killing people for no good reason!

And here's one piece of information that might help start the conversation: "The cause of this [disproportionate prevalence of AIDS in African Americans] is not necessarily driven by behavior," said Phill Wilson, founder of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles.

A recent study has found that many people of African descent have a genetic variant that creates a resistance to a particular strain (vivax) of Malaria, but may increase their vulnerability to HIV infection by as much as 40 per cent, because of the way it allows the HIV virus to attach to red blood cells. Paradoxically though, once people [in the study] with this variant became infected with HIV, they lived an average of 2 years longer than the people who did not have the variant. The genetic trait is found in 90 percent of Africans and 60 percent of African-Americans and helps explain, in part, the high HIV infection rates among Sub-Saharan Africans and Americans of African descent.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Sincere ignorance has never been more dangerous than when it costs lives.

If you do only one thing today, talk to someone about AIDS. That conversation might save a life. 

Resources:

• Black AIDS Institute 
• African American HIV/AIDS Resource Center

OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) Lead for Microsoft in East & Southern Africa

Please contact Odette Engelbrecht (i-odenge at microsoft.com) for more information, or to submit an application.

More about the role:

The OEM Lead will be responsible for developing sales strategies and plans to drive Microsoft software adoption by OEMs. As defined above, the OEM community includes MNA, Named Accounts and the System Builder Channel.

In some areas/subs, there may be some accountability for MNA, as appropriate and in all areas there will be accountability for Named and System Builder customers. This person will also drive the execution of these plans by hiring, developing, directing and empowering sales and marketing professionals. He/she will be accountable for the business goals relating to these partners, including revenue, unit, gains against unlicensed PC, product attach and mix and other metrics. The person in this role will lead the effort with OEMs of all sizes to ensure that products shipped by these partners will support and take advantage of current and future Microsoft technologies.

Job Functions:

*Business management: Analyzing and reporting accurately on the business is necessary to keep executive management and peer groups up to speed. It is also important when gathering support for new programs to give proper consideration to our partners large and small.

*Strategic planning: Timely market intelligence gathering is essential in reporting trends and potential business influencers. This person will lead the effort in understanding the market situation well enough so that a solid strategy can be built to accomplish Microsoft’s goals in the market and retain observance of global governance for the OEM business. The person must be good at developing clear, unambiguous strategies to achieve key goals such that sales and marketing people know what they have to achieve in order for them to be successful and as a result for Microsoft to be successful. A holistic understanding of the Microsoft business and customer oriented ‘One Microsoft’ approach is necessary.

Deliverables for this role will include:

• Analysis and reports to executive management and sales peers to apprise them of the state of the business and market trends
• Develop scorecards and use these to document and evangelize business successes and best practices.
• Sets financial and design win metrics
• Sets forecasts and tracks progress against FY quota, Design Wins, reduction of Unlicensed PC (UPC) and Customer Partner Experience (CPE)

*Relationship management: This person must be able to develop high level relationships both internally and externally. Close collaboration with local and Regional Microsoft leaders is crucial to the success of this job, as well as with the OEM customers. Must be credible in articulating a desire to have respectful, trusting relationships with the top decision makers within these OEM companies and demonstrate active listening to facilitate joint planning/investment. This requires that this person be experienced, have a mature presence and a well-rounded background.

*Results Oriented: Actions without results will not get by in this job. He/she should have the desire to be the point person for the metrics in the geographic space he/she is accountable for. It is expected that all tactics to drive results will support the strategic business plan set in place and will be done in full consideration of long term ramifications as well as short term metrics. At no time will action be taken without consideration of the entire OEM ecosystem.

*Governance: Careful observance and adherence to World Wide Microsoft OEM Policies is mandatory to this position. This person must be able to track and enforce that policies are fully followed by his/her team and able to identify potential liabilities. It is expected this position will act to preclude activities that expose Microsoft to unconsidered risk. And, with global governance, set strategy and coordinate our marketing message and implementation.

Requirements:

• 8-10 years of related experience
• MBA / Master degree preferred
• A degree in marketing field is a plus

This position requires strong industry knowledge, including: hardware standards (processors, displays, storage, and networking), operating systems, PC software, distribution and sales channels. Ability to translate MS product, program, and service offerings into meaningful value as it pertains to the customer’s business metrics, diffusing competitor's value statements. To leverage MS products and services to help the customers develop complex business and market opportunities. Must have strong, demonstrated, presentation skills to groups of all sizes and levels and a successful track record of sales and negotiation skills, including advanced sales knowledge.