Leila, I’ve followed your work since 2008. I even engaged Samasource in its early iteration when I was building websites. The thing about you and your journey is I think you forget your are a needle in a haystack of white saviors. Your approach and interpretation to development work makes you an outlier in this field. There aren’t many brown do gooders in this field, let alone any that have reached your level of influence. For every one of you, there are thousands and thousands flying out to “Africa” to pad their résumés doing the most egregious, self-serving, agency-ripping, tone deaf projects you’ve ever seen. These are the ones that ruin it for all the Leila outliers out there. I’ve written many articles against TOMS, Kony2012, and every white savior debacle in between. The real crime truly, apart from the damage caused, is that these badly executed projects suck up so much media and mental space that they bury all the Leilas out there. I have to admit, they bury my work too, as one of the few brown voices in the development sphere.

Thanks for this piece, and for living largely and unapologetically in service of those with so little. I do look up to you. Great work.