Michael Fairbanks

Michael Fairbanks is Chairman of the Board and co-founder of Akagera Medicines, a Rwandan biotech company that focuses on therapeutics for tuberculosis and MRSA, and vaccines for tuberculosis and other neglected tropical diseases.

He is an author and is an advisor to heads of government on the topics of biotechnology, export competitiveness and business solutions to poverty.

Born Michael Christopher Fairbanks December 7, 1957 South Bend, Indiana, USA Academic Affiliations Scranton University, Columbia University (SIPA), Stanford University (Hoover Institute), Harvard University (Weatherhead Center for International Affairs)

Occupation(s) Executive (banking, management consulting, biotech), Author, Investor Years active 1979-present Spouse Marylee Graffeo Fairbanks (b. 1966, m. 2003) Child Sebastian Michael Fairbanks (b. 2005) Website Mission Statement

Early Life and Education

Michael Fairbanks was born in South Bend, Indiana in 1957. His father held a PhD in philosophy from Notre Dame University.

Both his father and mother were resident-parents at a children’s home in Mishawaka, Indiana. The family moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1959 when his father accepted a position at the Jesuit University of Scranton. His father spent the next 47 years in Scranton teaching ethics, the philosophy of science, and American philosophy. His mother, née Fahey, was a third-grade teacher and owned an art gallery. He attended Nativity School, John J. Audubon #42, and Scranton Central High School where he was an All-State middle distance runner.

At the University of Scranton, he studied biochemistry and philosophy and minored in theology. He captained the varsity cross-country team as a freshman and worked 32 hours a week throughout college at St. Michael’s, a rural minimum-security reform facility for Philadelphia at-risk teenagers, in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania. He founded and coached a federally-sponsored track team for underprivileged youth for the National Youth Sports Program each summer.

Later, Fairbanks was a trustee of University of Scranton for six years,. He was named to the college’s Wall of Fame for athletes (1991), and received the university's Frank O’Hara award (2014) for commitment to the Jesuit mission. . The university gave him an honorary doctorate in humane letters in 2006 for his “accomplishments and devotion to social justice”. The Mayor of his hometown, Scranton, gave him the Key to the City in October of 2022 for his “dedicated service to humanity”.

Peace Corps, Kenya and graduate school

Fairbanks joined the Peace Corps (1979) and became a teacher in the village of Kiogoro in Kenya, at St. Augustine’s Otamba for two years. He taught English, Math, Science and Swahili. He raised funds, helped build school buildings and a farm, and took the student population from 12 to 250. Several of his students attended college in the United States. He then went to Tours, France in 1982 to study French language and culture at the Institut de Touraine. He attended the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He received his master’s degree in 1984 and went to work for the United States Foreign Service in the Republic of the Congo.

Early career

In 1984 Fairbanks joined the Africa division of Chase Manhattan Bank. He worked on projects in Nigeria, Cameroon, and South Africa. He next joined the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank subsidiary in Africa and worked in finance in Angola, Zambia and Kenya.

In 1990, Fairbanks joined the Monitor Company, a strategy-consulting firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He developed their country advisory practice, and led its international consulting firm carveout, the OTF Group.

He led OTF Group teams in Colombia during “the Apertura,” in El Salvador after the Chapultepec Peace Accords, Serbia after the Yugoslav wars, Rwanda since the Rwandan genocide, Afghanistan during the US war in Afghanistan, and Haiti before and after the 2010 Haitian earthquake. He worked on multi-year engagements with numerous sitting presidents in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa on business strategy, export competitiveness and private sector development.

Publishing and outreach

In 1997 he co–authored a book on business strategy in emerging markets: Lowing the Sea, Nurturing the Hidden Sources of Advantage in Developing Nations. He is one of the editors and authors of Culture Matters, How Values Shape Human Progress, with Samuel P. Huntington and Larry Harrison. . He conceived and edited, In the River They Swim: Essays from Around the World on Enterprise Solutions to Poverty, Templeton Press (2009).

He testified to the US Congress on post-conflict nation building, the effectiveness of foreign aid, and rebuilding Haiti. He wrote for the New York Times, Washington Post, Project Syndicate, The Hill, Fox News, Huffington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Philanthropy Roundtable Magazine, The New Times of Kigali, Tufts University’s Fletcher Forum of Foreign Affairs and The Harvard International Review. He and his wife, Marylee, produced two films about Africa. REPRESENTATIVE ARTICLES · A Business Solution to Haiti’s Poverty, Christian Science Monitor, Opinion, July 12, 2010

· What Makes International Philanthropy Work? Philanthropy Roundtable, What makes International Philanthropy Work?

· The Heart of Africa’s New Medical School

· Why Tuberculosis Persists

· The Biotech Revolution has begun in Rwanda

· China in Africa: Myths, Realities and Opportunities

Fellowships and teaching

Fairbanks became a Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University (2010), and was a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University (1999). He was an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Multilateral institutions and philanthropy

He worked with the president of the Inter-American Development Bank on the "Opportunities for the Majority" initiative, with the president of the African Development Bank on the China in Africa strategy, and with the president of the World Bank on its Comprehensive Development Framework (1996). He co-led John Templeton’s five-year philanthropic project (2007-12) on Enterprise Solutions to Poverty.

Biotechnology

Fairbanks is the co-founder and executive chairman of Akagera Medicines. The company is inspired by the work on Global Health Equity by Agnes Binagwaho and Paul Farmer, and is majority-owned by the people of Rwanda through the Rwanda Social Security Board. Its pipeline includes treatments for TB and MRSA (methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus), and vaccines for Covid-19, TB, Lassa fever, Marburg fever, and HIV.

He was an early investor in Merrimack Pharmaceuticals and its predecessor. He was also a founding board member of Silver Creek Pharmaceuticals and was the executive chairman from 2015 to 2020. It is a private, clinical company which focuses on treating acute brain injuries. The company developed and acquired 31 patents during his time, and underwent three rounds of financing totaling USD 40 million.

In Rwanda

He first traveled to Rwanda in 1980 and has worked there since 2002. He was invited to become a citizen of Rwanda in 2007. He is a member for nearly two decades of President Kagame’s advisory council.

He was the first outside Chairman of the Board of the Akilah Institute for Women, the first women’s college in East Africa.

Fairbanks was also a founding director of the Rwanda Biomedical Center, which oversees that nation’s healthcare system.

Family

He and his wife, Marylee, keep a small farm with animals called Forest Floor Farms. It produces biodynamic farm products.

References

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