Nthanda Manduwi, an MBA student at Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business, has been selected as a fellow in the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Big Bets Fellowship, a global leadership program designed to support emerging changemakers tackling some of the world’s most pressing challenges.
Selected from a highly competitive pool of more than 2,000 applicants, Manduwi is one of just 10 fellows chosen for the program’s inaugural Africa cohort.
The five-month fellowship brings together a diverse cohort of leaders who are advancing bold solutions to expand opportunities and strengthen communities around the world. Through leadership development programming, global convenings, and a residency at Lake Como in Italy, fellows engage in collaborative learning designed to accelerate the impact of their work. Each fellow also receives a $5,000 stipend and access to a network of partners and funders to help scale solutions across the African continent and beyond.
“Being part of the Big Bets Fellowship is meaningful to me because it affirms the tension I’ve been navigating in my work: the trade-off between solving specific, immediate pain points and stepping back to build at the level of systems”, shared Manduwi.
Manduwi, an entrepreneur and advocate for innovation and youth empowerment, has built a career at the intersection of entrepreneurship, digital transformation, and education. Her work focuses on expanding access to opportunities for young people and supporting creative and entrepreneurial ecosystems, particularly across Africa.
As part of the fellowship, Manduwi will join a global network of leaders working to drive systemic change, gaining both the resources and relationships needed to scale solutions with lasting impact.
Being a part of the inaugural Africa fellowship gives me the confidence to continue making long-term bets through Q2, particularly in areas like food systems and cyber-physical infrastructure, where the work is less defined but the potential impact - what we can do for humanity here, is far greater,” said Manduwi. “I am grateful Michigan State University gave me space to dream big, and I am privileged that platforms like Big Bets champion the same.”
The Big Bets Fellowship equips leaders with the tools, networks, and support needed to transform ambitious ideas into meaningful, scalable impact, connecting vision with the people and resources required to bring it to life.