SHERRIF ARPAIO
JF-Expert Member
- Aug 25, 2010
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She's one of ours, living the dream[emoji106][emoji106][emoji106]
And there are so many Tanzanians who are successful like her.
This is just a good example
Ninon Babra Marapachi Managing Director Bank of America Merrill Lynch from Tanzania
June 15, 2016
Ms. Ninon Babra Marapachi a Tanzanian has been a Vice President of Merrill Lynch Alternative Investments LLC at ML Select Futures I L.P. since January 2014 and serves as its Manager. Ms. Marapachi serves as a Managing Director and has been the head of the Hedge Fund Origination and Product Management team within the BAC Alternative Investments Group, a division within BAC that provides investment professionals and their clients with access to investment products and other services.
Photo: Buck Ennis
By Aaron Elstein
To stretch out the $20 she arrived with in the United States in 1998 to attend college in Massachusetts, Ninon Marapachi slept on a pillowcase stuffed with her clothes and didn't tell even her best friend that she was washing dishes in a Mount Holyoke campus cafeteria. "I didn't want to be anyone's pity case," she said.
That drive helped her land an internship at Merrill Lynch. Now she oversees a team that decides which hedge funds should be offered to Merrill Lynch's $1.9 trillion client base. The position gives her tremendous clout in the mostly white-male world of asset management.
It's all a very long way from Tanzania, where she grew up in a house without running water, electricity, windows or doors. Her ticket out was a scholarship to a high school in Norway whose selection process was an eye-opener in itself. "It was my first meeting ever with a room full of Caucasians," she recalled. After an introductory economics class, she tabled her plans to become a doctor.
She works today to make sure teenagers from poor New York families get a shot at the same breaks she got and serves on the board of the organization that brought her to the U.S., Sponsors for Educational Opportunity. In the meantime, she figures there are plenty more opportunities ahead. "People say to me, 'Oh, you ought to run for president of Tanzania,'" she said. "I'm not ready for that."
