Vane Makori
A humble beginning
Before the sun’s first rays light the small Kenyan village of Nyanchwa, Vane Makori sits at the table working on her homework. For an hour every morning she tackles complex problems. It’s not just that Vane loves mathematics. She hopes one day she will problem-solve her family out of their humble situation.
Some weeks her mother can’t afford her high school fees so she has to stay home, but Vane keeps studying. By second year she is a scholarship student and her continued dedication pays off. She qualifies for government help to attend university in Nairobi.
Mathematical skills open doors
At Jomo Kenyatta University, Vane is taking nine courses each semester. She has no life outside of class, but studying doesn’t feel like a punishment. Her main stress is figuring out how to pay 25 percent of the fees. She starts working for graduate students on the side, getting paid to collect and organize their data. That experience proves useful because jobs are scarce after graduation. She starts her own business in statistical analysis and what money she makes she sends home to her family.
After eight months, Vane wins a scholarship for the prestigious African Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Ghana. She throws herself into the intensive ten-month program where sleep is her enemy, but she’s learning from distinguished professors from Canada and the UK and is surrounded by math geeks with hungry minds like hers. Vane begins to understand how math can open doors all over the world for her.
Becoming a Queen Elizabeth Scholar
She comes to the University of Victoria to take a master’s program in telecommunications and information security as a Queen Elizabeth Scholar. Her tuition and most of her living costs are paid by the generous scholarship. It’s her first time outside of Africa. The course, and the culture shock, are hard to start with, but Vane resists the old habit of burying her nose in books. She discovers hiking and rock-climbing, pot-luck dinners and volunteering in the community. This new area of study intrigues her. Learning about hardware and software protections, security breaches, hackers and internet pirates. Technology is racing forward in Africa. Everyone, from large companies to governments, will need her problem-solving skills. Perhaps one day, she’ll return to Kenya and do something to improve technology security there.
Each step of Vane’s journey has been a partnership: her hard-work and dedication matched by the generosity of individuals and government programs who want to see a smart young woman from humble beginnings succeed in a world that needs people like her.