It took Dr. Hamza Asumah one night to fill out his application for the Mandela Washington Fellowship. After graduating from the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons and completing his Membership in Surgery, Dr. Asumah had been encouraged by a friend who had recently participated in the program, the flagship of the Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI), initiated by President Barack Obama and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State Young African Leaders Initiative. After recognizing it might be an opportunity for him to learn how to scale his offerings, Dr. Asumah opened the application and simply couldn’t take his eyes away. What often takes several days for applicants to complete took him mere hours and, by 5 a.m. the next morning, he had hit “submit.” The click was one that would forever alter the trajectory of his career and send him to the University of Nevada, Reno for longer than he could have anticipated.

After being accepted into the 2019 Mandela Washington Fellowship cohort, Dr. Asumah found himself on a plane to Reno. After completing the program, he decided to make the University his hub for continued education and earned his Master’s in Business Administration from the University in 2022. Today he is pursuing his Master’s in Health Policy and Administration from the University’s School of Public Health. 

From his first initial conversations with Northern Nevada International Center, the University’s nonprofit that orchestrates the Mandela Washington Fellowship in the region, and its executive director, Carina Black, Ph.D., Dr. Asumah knew the area was one in which he had a chance at thriving.

“In Africa, someone at that level in an organization like NNIC wouldn’t have connected with the participants of a program,” said Dr. Asumah. “I immediately felt supported.”

Dean Mosier and Dr. Asumah.

The welcoming environment continued with Dr. Asumah’s first interaction with the University’s College of Business, where he says the first conversation with Dean Gregory Mosier, made him feel an immediate kinship with the faculty.

“It was the first time I’d attended school outside of Ghana, and also the longest I had stayed outside of my country,” said Dr. Asumah. “But it was enriching. I met so many different people, which bolstered my confidence - especially coming from an environment where sometimes you feel limited in different ways.”

While he cites the University’s focus on higher quality work products as motivating, Dr. Asumah has already been applying his education in a manner designed to amplify impact. His blog, African Doctorpreneurs, focuses on the world of healthcare, entrepreneurship and innovation and attempts to inspire fellow African medical entrepreneurs who are also looking for ways to affect healthy changes in their communities. Posts focus on providing insights into past, present and future practices that can transform healthcare entrepreneurship in Africa, and several of the learnings come from the faculty at the University, carrying an impressive ripple from the Biggest Little City to broader reaches of the globe. Additionally, he adds insights from his work as a surgeon and as the founder and managing director of Halo Medical Services in Ghana where his help conceptualizing and developing IT tools to digitize hospital records there led to a substantial shift in more efficiencies within the system.

But according to Dr. Asumah, it’s what he can gain in his time in America to extend his medical impact in Ghana that drives him. He wants to be able to scale care for individuals through administrative and managerial efforts.

“Dr. Asumah has always been an impressive, community-centric professional,” said Black. “In reviewing his MWF materials, we discovered he had pioneered the establishment of the first healthcare database and virtual consultation platform in Ghana, amid other accomplishments. But his appetite for learning never slows. He’s always eager to explore the medical world from different angles, and has worked for NNIC as a medical team lead for preferred communities and refugee health.”

It’s clear that Dr. Asumah continues every day to embody one of the first tenets of The Wolf Pack Way, leveraging what he has learned at the University in a capacity that benefits others.  In fact, in 2021, he was awarded Graduate Assistant of the Year from the University’s College of Business. Presently, he spends his days on campus amid the Health Policy and Administration team, absorbing best practices to apply digitally for his audience and to eventually bring home to Ghana.

“Dr. Asumah’s has demonstrated that true success is not measured solely by personal achievements, but by the mark one leaves on the community," Dean Muge Alpinar-Elci,M.D., MPH at the University’s School of Public Health, said. "He consistently seeks to broaden his understanding of the medical field from diverse perspectives and continues to exemplify a commitment to excellence in healthcare. Dr. Asumah is a proven professional dedicated to the well-being of local and global communities and on behalf of our School, we are incredibly proud of his contributions.”

When he’s not writing, in the classroom or working toward his second master’s degree, Dr. Asumah says he spends time with friends. He also states he recommends the University to multiple individuals considering an MPH and MBA program.

“The best source of motivation for me has been the relationships I’ve built here in northern Nevada,” said Dr. Asumah. “Both the connections NNIC has afforded me and the bonds I’ve built at the University have been priceless. These entities work so closely with the broader community to help connect me to people, systems, and insights and I realized early on that this is the kind of foundation that will help more individuals back home when I return. You need to feel comfortable if you’re going to seriously consider staying somewhere so far from home, and I have felt that since day one.”

Northern Nevada International Center has been a participating organization in the Mandela Washington Fellowship since 2015. The program is supported and funded by grants from the United States Department of State and the Young African Leaders Initiative.