Meet Mathieu Cornillon – Country Representative for Pharo Foundation’s Rwanda Office

Mathieu Cornillon is the Country Representative for Pharo Foundation’s Rwanda Office. A successful businessman in his own right, Mathieu changed his career focus towards more philanthropic goals and joined us in October last year following work at NGOs in South Africa and Madagascar.

The following interview gives some further background and insight on Mathieu Cornillon:

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Who is Mathieu?

I am the new Country Lead for Pharo Foundation’s Rwanda office, having joined in October 2022.

I’m 41 and I am a French and Australian citizen now living in Kigali with my wife and two young daughters. I studied in France up until my bachelors and then started moving around the world to finalise my studies and ended up in the USA, where I completed an MBA in Illinois.

I began my career in the private sector and in 2014 I founded a start-up company called Sherpa, where I am still a non-executive director. Sherpa is an on-demand express delivery service, which is tech-driven and based in Australia.

What brought you to Pharo?

Following the success of Sherpa, my first daughter was born in 2017. As Sherpa grew and became a large player in Australian landscape, I decided to change my outlook on life. I started to think what kind of world I wanted my daughters to live and how I could work to improve it.

I was inspired to start another company, however this time I built it in a “profit-for-purpose” model. This new company was a cosmetics firm called KKTUS LIFE and was an organisation looking to end extreme poverty. We designed organic skincare to fund eco & socially responsible projects through micro-financing worldwide.

This venture inspired me to look further at the charitable sector and I decided I would be best placed working for an NGO. So I did just that, and worked for NGOs in Australia, South Africa and Madagascar before deciding I was keen to learn more about Rwanda.

It was when I researched Rwanda that I first came across Pharo Foundation. Learning more about the organisation I decided it sounded like the best fit for my talents and well set up to enact real change in the region. I applied for a role and have been delighted to move to Kigali with my family – we have made the city our home.

What does your day-to-day work consist of?

Pharo will have been in Rwanda for two years in May and I have only been part of the team since October 2022. Setting up has taken a while and it is a little different to other regions as Pharo is listed as a private company in Rwanda.

My key work at the moment is in building a strong team and getting our first programmes going. Our first school is scheduled to open in September, which is an exciting prospect for us all. We are working to build our footprint in education first and then hope to be able to build in other areas – just as the foundation has been able to do elsewhere in Africa.

A big part of my work is also planning for the different challenges that will be faced in Rwanda. We will be keeping to the foundation’s core principles and visions but we will also need to adapt to the differing challenges in Rwanda. For instance; given the amount of rain in Rwanda our eventual water projects will probably look quite different to projects in drier regions such as Somaliland.

However, at present the Rwanda team is keen to focus on our first step of getting children access to quality education.

What would you like to achieve in this role?

I only started my “development journey” in 2017 so I am still excited about where this could take me. So far, I have tried working with several different NGOs and working in a few different types of roles to find where I can most make a difference. Every working environment is different, but Pharo Foundation seems like it could be an ideal fit. The foundation has a good approach in terms of where the funding comes from, and I think this gives it an advantage over many NGOs which are struggling to achieve their goals.

What I really want to achieve is a long-lasting impact to Rwanda. First and foremost, I want children in the region to have access to quality education and I want to leave a lasting impact on the region which my two girls will be proud of.

Any final thoughts or messages?

It is an exciting time to work for Pharo in Rwanda. We are growing our team and with recent additions to our team we have gone from an all-male office to over a third female. I look forward to growing our team more and meeting more like-minded people in the region who are keen to develop Rwanda.