Ghanian Alumnus Plans to Give Back

Hailing from Accra, Ghana, Anthony Boaten came to the United States more than a decade ago, enrolling first at Western Wyoming Community College and later at the University of Wyoming.

In college and ever since, Boaten has been acquiring the skills and financial foundation that will let him return to Africa and give back to his community.

“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to be a teacher,” he says. “That is the goal—to go back to Ghana and become a teacher. I just want to do that closer to my later years, a bit closer to retirement. If they can’t afford to pay me, I plan to do it for free, so I want to set myself up a little bit more first.”

Having learned about oil and gas production at Western Wyoming, Boaten arrived at UW looking to complement his technical knowledge with business acumen. So he jumped into the organizational leadership program in the College of Business, earning a bachelor of applied science two years later.

“I think it was a superb program, especially for students not quite certain about what path in business they want to take,” Boaten says. “It helped me get a good handle on leadership principles and organizational management. It was very collaborative and fruitful, and it helped me to get to where I am now.”

Since graduating from UW, Boaten has completed an MBA at the University of South Dakota and started working on a Ph.D. at Colorado State University, for which he is specializing in organizational learning, performance and change management. But he is more than just a student.

As Boaten began working his way through graduate school, he also began climbing the corporate ladder at Union Pacific, before starting a job with Amazon three months ago.

He is now an operations manager for Amazon’s warehouse and fulfillment center in Denver.

Boaten’s experiences at UW—from the practical knowledge he gained to the connections he made—have helped him through all of this.

“I’m still very much in touch with most of my mates from UW,” he says. “There was this African community that I was part of, and we’re all still in touch. We reach out to each other for career advice and more. I have a couple of friends from Ethiopia who are engineers, so when I have engineering questions, I know exactly who to call.”

In fact, the support Boaten received as an international student was one of the highlights of his tenure at UW, he says.

“UW, at least during the time I was there, had a really good support system for international students,” Boaten says. “I know that’s just a matter of job responsibility for some people, but for the people on the receiving end, it means the world to them. I know it’s helped me and helped a lot of my friends. A lot of the guys who went back home also have great stories to tell about their experience.”

Boaten also tries to give back to his Ghanian community now, developing an IT network with some friends back home, even as he works and lives thousands of miles away.

“Take Meals on Wheels here in the U.S —it’s just like that, except with computers,” he says.“ We go to remote areas of Ghana to train people on basic computing and IT skills.”

It might seem a circuitous path for someone from Ghana to travel and work so far from home in order to serve his community, but Boaten said gaining experience in the corporate world—and in the wider world more generally—will complement the more traditional book-learning he has done.

“Nothing against any professional students, but I found most of my teachers who had work experience outside of school were able to drive the point home a lot clearer in my situation,” he says. “I know that my experience from working in the U.S. is going to be very valuable and help me to be the teacher that I want to be, so I’m giving it my all.”