How I Found Out My White Male Predecessor Made 2x My Salary
And what I did about it
I was ecstatic, I had been chosen out of 300 candidates to fill the position. I couldn’t sleep the night before my first day on the job, I was so excited. When I got into the office, I met with the full team. I was so grateful for the opportunity and vowed to work hard and even exceed my objectives.
We had our first conference in Nairobi, Kenya. I hadn't been back to the African continent in years. Even though I was from West Africa, I was happy to be in Kenya, it felt a little bit like home. I was in charge of building our relationships with the government and international organizations there.
Weeks before the trip I had reached out to the key people in my network and invited them to our conference. My boss thanked me profusely. He said that he was impressed with the quality of people in my network. Days before my trial period ended, he told me that he definitely wanted to keep me on the team for as long as I wanted. I was elated.
We had just started working on an important access to medicines program in East Africa and I was sitting at my desk pulling together the concept note. There was a desk mat right under my keyboard and I kept on pulling it up and down as I tried to find my words to make the proposal as tight and as…
