Empowering female entrepreneurs in rural Ethiopia

Kiersten DeHaven ’14

COO Kidame Mart

MAJORS: POLITICAL SCIENCE, SPANISH MINOR

Resourcefulness, relentless drive, and service have guided Kiersten DeHaven ’14 throughout her young career. From her service stint in the Peace Corps to her current role as COO of the for-profit social enterprise Kidame Mart, she has exhibited a commitment to supporting less fortunate women and children throughout the world.

Kidame Mart is Ethiopia’s largest last-mile distribution network, empowering over 3,000 rural female micro-entrepreneurs to earn incomes by selling high impact consumer goods door-to-door or in market shops to over 1.5 million rural customers. Kidame Mart works with a range of partners to create opportunities for rural Ethiopians to live better lives, from large corporations such as Unilever and Vodacom to aid groups such as USAID. Kidame Mart recently assisted Catholic Relief Services in providing two months worth of emergency food relief for 6,000 refugees displaced due to Ethiopia’s on-going civil unrest. DeHaven believes strongly in market-driven solutions to sustainable development and devotes her career to addressing development challenges with innovative private sector solutions.

DeHaven earned her bachelor’s in political science with a minor in Spanish from Notre Dame, where she was also a four-year monogram winner with the Fighting Irish women’s rowing team.  She holds a master’s degree in Global Human Development from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Between earning her degrees, she served for two years as a English literacy teacher with the Peace Corps in Western Samoa, where she raised money locally for a creative learning center for over 300 students and obtained grants to retrofit the school’s water supply so that students are never barred from attending school due to a lack of access to running water  After the Peace Corps, DeHaven served as a high school rowing coach in Hamilton, New Zealand, until attending graduate school. She is from Tampa, Florida, and currently lives in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.