00:15My name is Shawn Howard.
00:17I'm an International Relations major and
a Junior here at Stanford.
00:20Last summer, I was in Accra,
Ghana, working for
00:23a company called Hubtel through
the Stanford Seed program.
00:26Hubtel is a think-tank company.
00:28Various different apps that help
Ghanaians with their banking and
00:31with financial payments.
00:34I was a late bloomer coming
to the Seed program.
00:36Originally, I was going to be in New York
doing investment banking with JP Morgan,
00:40but something in my gut
in my heart said like,
00:43I will have my entire life to
try to more traditional routes.
00:47I will have my entire
life doing the most past,
00:50but I'm ready to try something new now.
00:52When, again, am I going to be able to go
to Ghana and make a huge difference while
00:55also doing business and
strategy and like making an impact?
01:00Working at Hubtel, I was able to manage
like seven engineer in building this app.
01:05An app that's used by hundreds of
thousands of Ghanaians that I helped to
01:09create, build and decide where to go.
01:11And then on the flip side,
01:12I would also help with the legislation
processes that Hubtel did meeting with
01:16ambassadors, the US ambassador to
Ghana we were able to meet with.
01:19The Vice President of Ghana.
01:21We even met with the President of
the World Bank talking about and
01:23drafting legislation that's going to
be used for the entire country.
01:27I can't think of a better growth,
professionally, than doing that.
01:29This clearly blew the rest
out of the water.
01:32There's always something to do in Accra.
01:32There's always something to do in Ghana.
01:36Every night the other interns,
or the people at work, was like,
01:39Shawn, let's go out.
01:39Let's go out to eat, let's go to
this party, let's go to the beach.
01:42We would go to these jazz clubs,
the suburbs, countryside.
01:47We saw all of Accra, from like vibes,
the chill, everything.
01:52We also saw more of Ghana.
01:53We got to go to the Volta Region, which
is in the north eastern sector of Ghana,
01:58which is like this really beautiful
rural area, and see the Wili Falls.
02:02It's this huge waterfall that like,
02:05over these cascading rocks
out into this huge pool.
02:09You could barely see the top, and birds
flying everywhere, just hundreds of people
02:13just singing, dancing, it was one of the
best experiences I've ever had in my life.
02:21Some of my coworkers at Hubtel,
they talk about boxing.
02:24It's always been an interest to me,
I love the Creed, I love the Rocky movies.
02:27Let me try this out.
02:30My name actually became known in
the kind of boxing community in Accra
02:33toward the National Champion in Ghana.
02:35Heard about this American foreigner
to try the things out and he's like,
02:38I want to see what this kid's about.
02:40And he invited me to
join his training club.
02:42And to trained with him six
days a week was amazing.
02:45We would wake up at 4 AM and start
there on the beach and then go running.
02:48And just go running until the sun came up.
02:50And literally box the ocean on the beach,
dodging the waves, and it would be crazy.
02:55And then, other days, we're like,
we're going up this mountain, today.
02:57And we would train and
run up the mountain and back down.
02:59And I have never been
more tired in my life.
03:01But it was super worthwhile and
fulfilling.
03:04So that's something I'll always keep.
03:07Never in your life are you going to
be able to make such a huge impact,
03:10while also growing professionally,
in another country.
03:13This is your time to take risks.
03:15This is your time to really
explore something new,
03:17then do that thing that you
know you want to do but
03:19you're afraid that this is not
the path that most people take.
03:22You have the opportunity, you have
the summers to just explore things and
03:25you definitely should.
03:27The other things will always be there,
but this may not.
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