Building a link with students in Burundi

It's been more than a year since Tom Phillips went to Africa to teach entrepreneurship at Hope Africa University in Burundi. Phillips stepped out of his comfort zone, his world of handling institutional and individual investments, for a week as a business professor.

Last week, I got the chance to talk to him about the trip. I was curious how he presented entrepreneurship, as he knew it, to people who were just coming out of a 16-year civil war.

Dealing with market swings and asset allocation is second nature to him, but teaching students in east-central Africa about entrepreneurship was quite challenging, said Phillips, president of T.S. Phillips Investments Inc. in Oklahoma City.

He wondered what a businessman from Oklahoma would have in common with the students and whether his lectures would be relevant to their lives.

"For example, it's hard for most of them to grasp the concept of investing when they use every dollar they have for basic subsistence. A person invests with extra dollars, but they didn't have extra dollars,” Phillips said.

So he used basic human qualities to show how entrepreneurship can be cultivated and how entrepreneurs could succeed.

"I had to try to come up with what we have in common with an entrepreneur in Africa — you've got to work hard, be a risk-taker, you've got to be flexible and open-minded. You must have those to be a successful entrepreneur anywhere,” he said.

About 60 to 80 students heard his lectures at the Christian liberal arts university, which also educates non-Christians.

When he wasn't in the classroom, Phillips was assisting other teachers and visiting with the administration.

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