A Voice For Collaboration
Mimi Steward ’83 is making a cross-continental difference.
BY JANA F. BROWN
Meeting people from all over the world was a highlight for Mimi Steward ’83, both in her years at St. Paul’s School and while studying romance languages and Latin American Studies at Harvard.
“The more I learned about people who hailed from outside the U.S., the more I thought, ‘I want to see all this for myself,’” says Steward, who came to SPS from Washington, D.C., as a Fourth Former.
While she found her first year at SPS challenging, Steward immersed herself in School life. SPS sparked her innate curiosity, and the message she heard about making a positive impact on the world, coupled with her sense of adventure, influenced her desire to pursue international work.
“St. Paul’s taught me the best lesson,” she says, “which is that if you don’t succeed the first time, you get up, dust yourself off and try again.”
After Harvard, Steward earned a law degree from UC Berkeley and set to work applying her curiosity to her career. She took an indirect route to her current role as a senior trade advisor with the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, beginning as a litigation attorney before moving on to international law at The Hague. During a decade at the U.S. Department of Commerce working on trade remedies, Steward learned the intricacies of domestic trade practices, and realized she wanted to facilitate business relationships between U.S. and foreign companies.
Steward eventually began to focus on the prospects offered by the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which allows African countries to export most products to the U.S. at preferential duty rates. She found the chance to help manage the specifics of those exports when she joined USAID.
Today, stationed in Kenya, Steward’s work prioritizes job creation, boosting exports and trade — particularly in the apparel industry — and supporting the private sector in East Africa. In that capacity, she facilitates economic growth by working with government agencies, private companies and donor partners to implement self-sustaining initiatives.
“I’ve always wanted to see that two-way partnership coming to life in a practical way,” Steward says. “It’s great that we have all these wonderful agreements, but I think for most people, whether you’re in Kenya or the U.S., they want to see sustainable jobs, and that’s starting to happen.”
Among Steward’s recent responsibilities has been managing a multi-million-dollar award for USAID. She describes the funding as a cooperative agreement the organization is implementing with a partner, with goals of stimulating job creation and promoting trade in the region. The award allows Steward to work with USAID in Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.
“I focus more on the technical side of things,” she says. “How are we going to stimulate job creation? Are we going to do that through issuing smaller grants or training?”
Steward is also a voice of textile work for the African Trade and Investment Program, which boosts opportunities in East Africa. In particular, the work in Kenya entails supporting apparel manufacturers that are already preparing to export to the U.S. but may require additional funding for equipment or training. So far, Steward has fostered two-way trade partnerships between Kenya and the United States and collaborated with the government of Kenya, the U.S. Embassy and various private sector entities.
Last May, Steward witnessed the cooperative partnership between Kenya and the U.S. when a Kenyan company opened a retail store in Atlanta, Georgia. The event was attended by Kenyan President William Ruto, and the company brought with it several smaller apparel companies, an operation now creating jobs for American citizens.
“That [partnership is] what I’ve always wanted to see, and I hope to see more of it,” she says. “There are plenty of law firms that support importers and exporters, but once you leave the continent of North America, it’s not necessarily going to make headlines. I want to leave a mark that allows people to thrive.”