We are already starting to look forward to the BIC Homecoming activities coming up on October 31. As we have for the past few years, we will have a BIC Alumni Homecoming Lecture on the Friday afternoon of Homecoming weekend (October 31) and a reception that evening at the home of a BIC faculty member (more details to come). All alumni are welcome to join us for either of these events–we hope you will!
This year we are very excited to welcome Megan Rapp (’07) back to Baylor as our Homecoming speaker. We recently caught up with Meagan for a brief interview about her current work. You can read more below, and we hope you will make plans to join us for Homecoming this year. If you have any questions, you can always email us at BIC@baylor.edu.
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What year did you graduate from Baylor? What did you study?
I graduated from Baylor in 2007 and double majored in Economics and French. I was in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core (BIC) and the Honors Program and wrote my Honors Thesis on the microfinance models in Haiti, Brazil and Bangladesh. While at Baylor I became interested in domestic and international poverty, and I actively sought classroom experiences and extracurricular activities to expose myself to poverty alleviation.
What are you doing currently for work/career? What do you enjoy most about your work?
I currently work for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which is the arm of the US Government that provides economic, development and humanitarian assistance globally in support of the foreign policy goals of the United States as well as seeks to improve lives in the developing world. Within USAID, I currently oversee the Development Credit Authority’s (DCA’s) Africa Team, which is responsible for structuring partial-credit guarantees to open up finance for underserved sectors and borrowers. My favorite part of my job is working with connecting talented businesswomen and men in Africa with finance so that they can pursue their ambitions. I love traveling and problem solving, all with the end goal of empowering borrowers to access finance for their enterprises and projects.
How has your BIC education influenced your life/career since leaving Baylor?
Quite significantly. BIC was a very formative experience for me, and in fact, continues to shape how I view the world, problems, and solutions. It was in BIC where I first started seeing connections across time, locations, and subjects. BIC helped me start putting puzzle pieces of history and current events together which I didn’t even realize needed to be put together. I still have many of the BIC texts and articles and like going back to some of my favorites, including Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak.
