Semra Seifu, Management Associate
Semra Seifu learned the basics of teaching at an unusually young age: She was only seven years old when she set up her first classroom in her Addis Ababa, Ethiopia home.
She would line up school notebooks on her bed, arranging them in neat rows, just like the desks at her actual school. Once the classroom was complete, she would call her students to order and begin the day’s lesson.
The neighborhood children, including Semra’s three younger brothers, were busy playing ball outside. Semra declined their invitation to join, instead preferring her own indoor activities—never mind that her students existed only in her imagination.
“I don’t have a sister,” she says. “When my brothers play boy games I’m usually on my own doing something. These are some of the games I did, just pretending to be a teacher.”
It’s no wonder Semra fancied herself a teacher at such a young age. Her father was a renowned Ethiopian poet and a professor of folklore and Amharic at Addis Ababa University. He urged each of his four children to read regularly, paying special attention to Semra – the reader in the family. He encouraged her to keep a reading log, where she tracked books she had completed, plus the title, author and a short plot summary.
Her father succeeded in instilling a love of reading and learning in Semra. Her early appreciation for education has stayed with her even decades later.
KEEPING HER HEART IN AFRICA
At 21 years old, Semra reluctantly left Ethiopia to pursue a degree she thought would lead to a perfect career given her love of languages: working as an interpreter for the United Nations.
“I did not want to leave Ethiopia,” she explains. “I was the last person to leave from my family.”
Instead of following her family to the United States, she chose France.
“My brothers and my cousins, they would die if they do not get out to this United States country,” she says. “I wasn’t really intrigued by it.”
But before she knew it, she was booking her flight to Indiana’s Purdue University after being accepted into its Master’s program in foreign language and literature. Despite her initial indifference, she was U.S.-bound.
As much as she loved studying languages, however, she knew it wouldn’t enable her to give back to developing countries like her own. She looked into other subjects and transferred to Purdue’s instructional design and educational technology program.
“Once I did instructional design training and development,” she says, “it made more sense to me that, ‘Wow, I can take this back home or to Africa. I would love to do that.’”
PRESERVING HER ETHIOPIAN CULTURE
Semra met many classmates during her years at Purdue who had never heard of Ethiopia. They would regularly ask if she went to visit her family on weekends, or what state Ethiopia was in.
“All of that has been adding up in my head and I’m like, ‘What?’” she says.
She rallied other Ethiopian students—many of whom were her own brothers and cousins—and put on exhibitions on campus. They set up tables with maps, showed off traditional Ethiopian clothing and products and shared their country’s culture with others at Purdue.
The turnout was fantastic.
“Professors brought their kids, students came and people were like, ‘Oh wow, I did not know,’” Semra says. “That was what I did as a student to preserve and share and keep the tradition and the culture going.”
As driven as Semra was to conserve her culture, the job offers she received in the United States made it hard for her to return to Ethiopia when she graduated. She accepted a position at a consulting firm in the private sector.
“Of course initially it’s great,” she says. “And it’s exciting to be working for an American firm, you know, coming from Ethiopia and all that.”
But it wasn’t enough for her. She felt guilty working in the United States, for a U.S. company and making rich people even wealthier.
“This is not where I need to be,” she thought.
Years after her debut as a 7-year-old teacher, Semra was still hooked on helping others, especially in her home country. As a teenager, she participated in several campaigns in support of Ethiopia that built new homes in remote areas of the country and promoted literacy nationwide.
“All of it triggered this desire for me to continue working in Africa,” she says.
But her career in the private sector wouldn’t allow for it. In 2000, she moved to Washington, D.C. in search of a career that would bring her back to Africa; she found it in international development.
Ten years later, Semra was attracted to a position at Creative, where she could build on her passion for Africa in a new and inspiring environment. Once on staff, she was asked to support education programs in Malawi, Egypt, Tanzania and Nigeria, countries she could relate to, and a topic that hit home.
“What I value the most is seeing the local participants really moving forward with whatever we’re working on together,” she says. “They take their initiative, they have the skills, they have the knowledge, the intelligence to do so much. And it’s just great to see that.”
Now that Semra has a son of her own—5-year-old Wabi—and is raising him in the United States, she is even more driven to maintain those traditional Ethiopian customs. She wants to teach him where he came from. She even makes him homemade story books in Amharic so he becomes familiar with the letters and print of the language.
“I make even more effort, by exposing him to different events, taking him to Ethiopia, exposing him to family members, exposing him to the language and so on,” she says.
Just like her father did for her, Semra passes on to her son important lessons and values, like appreciating your own culture, and teaching those around you.