Leila Janah

Leila Janah
Leila Janah in 2014
Born	October 9, 1982 (1982-10-09) (age 34) Lewiston, New York
Residence	San Francisco, California
Alma mater	Harvard University
Occupation	Founder and CEO of Sama and LXMI
Website	samasource.org

Leila Janah is the Founder and CEO of Samasource and LXMI, two companies that share a common social mission to end global poverty by giving work to people in need. She is also the co-author of America's Moment: Creating Opportunity in the Connected Age, a book by Rework America: A Markle Initiative.

Janah was born on October 9, 1982 in Lewiston, New York, near Niagara Falls, and grew up in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of Indian immigrants, who came to the United States with nothing. Janah describes her childhood as being difficult, often due to a lack of financial security. As a teenager, Janah worked many jobs, including babysitting and tutoring. She attended the California Academy of Mathematics and Science. She won a scholarship at 17 through American Field Services, and convinced them to let her spend it teaching in Ghana where she spent 6 months during her senior year of high school. In Ghana, Janah taught English to young students in the village of Akuapem, many of whom were blind. Janah has cited this early experience as sparking her passion for working in Africa, and she continued to visit the continent during her time in college.

Janah attended Harvard University, graduating in 2005 with a degree in African Development Studies. While at Harvard, Janah conducted fieldwork in Mozambique, Senegal and Rwanda and consulted to and authored papers for the World Bank's Development Research Group and Ashoka on social and economic rights.

Upon graduation, Janah worked as a management consultant with Katzenbach Partners , focusing on healthcare, mobile and outsourcing companies. One of Janah's first assignments with Katzenbach Partners was managing a call center in Mumbai. At the call center Janah met a young man who traveled each day by rickshaw from Dharavi, one of the largest slums in South Asia, to work at the center. Janah has cited this experience as sparking the inspiration for Samasource, the non-profit she founded in 2008.