Michael Wilkerson

Michael Wilkerson is Co-Founder and CEO of Tugende, a for-profit social enterprise in East Africa providing asset financing to informal sector MSMEs, primarily motorcycle taxi drivers. He first visited Uganda at age 19 as a Stanford University student intern at The Daily Monitor newspaper, developing his passion for Uganda and motorcycle taxis. He began his career as a journalist with internships at The Daily Monitor and The Independent in Uganda. He co-founded Tugende in 2010 as an informal side project and formally established it as a growth startup in 2012. He holds a B.A. in Political Science with university distinction and departmental honors from Stanford University and an M.Phil in Politics from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar and received the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Civics. He has lived full-time in Uganda for over 10 years.