Why we chose Jacob as a Fellow

Jacob began his career as a management consultant. But after an internship in the Office of the Liberia President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Jacob set out to start Farm Builders, an organization that improves the income of smallholder farmers using tree crops.

During the Liberian civil war, farmers who previously made a living off the land returned to find their farms completely devastated. The mindset across the country, after being ravaged by violence, was to only think about short-term gains. Farm Builders aims to help smallholder farmers revitalize their rubber farms and begin thinking about the future. They move smallholder farmers out of poverty by providing smallholder tree crop farmers with management services and access to long-term investment capital.