Headshot for Kofi Taha

Kofi Taha

Director - Global

Kofi is an equity-minded facilitator, community organiser, programme administrator, and fundraiser with over 20 years of professional experience.

He served as the Associate Director of MIT D-Lab where he focused on partnering with communities to develop, implement, and evaluate asset-based, community-driven design practises. He has co-facilitated village-level technology design workshops in Uganda and Haiti, helped new enterprises commercialise social impact products in Ghana and Tanzania, provided support to local innovation centres in Brazil, Colombia, and India, and helped lead the International Development Innovation Network, a global community of 1,000+ innovators, entrepreneurs, ecosystem builders, researchers, and educators.

As part of the Affordable Design & Entrepreneurship programme at Olin College of Engineering, he collaborates with local partners to implement Shifting Rhythms, an after-school and summer programme in rural Mississippi that offers youth ages 9-15 an opportunity to express themselves through hands-on technology, arts, and entrepreneurship projects. As part of Equity Meets Design, he supports organisations aiming to close the gap between their espoused and enacted equity values.

Regardless of geography or whether technology is a focus, what drives his facilitation work is a commitment to improving the use of inclusive practises that can lead to more equitable outcomes in historically excluded communities. Standing on the sacrifices of many ancestors, he studied political economy at Columbia University, urban planning at MIT, and is currently a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.