Godfred Yemofio’s parents were too poor to complete traditional secondary and post-secondary schooling as we think of it in America—high school, then college, maybe graduate or professional school. His father was hired by the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation where he gained technical skills and was eventually able to further his education in Europe and become an engineer. His mom started a catering business from scratch.
“As head of an engineering department on marine electronics for a giant fishing company, my dad used to fly from port to port certifying ships, or sometimes he would be on one as it went from Accra all the way to Dakar or even Mauritania.”
Yemofio’s father would be gone for up to three months at a time.
“The husband needed to leave money for the woman to run the home,” he says, “but an older woman in the neighborhood told my mom, ‘You can’t rely on a man. You have to stand on your own feet,’ to my dad's chagrin.
“So, instead of my mom just holding the money and waiting, she would take the three months-worth and buy some flour, margarine, and a little of this and that.”
Each time she went to the market to buy goods for the family, she would leave samples of her baking with the vendors.
“She would go to the lady from whom she bought tomatoes, ‘I want you to try this.’ Or, ‘here are some scones you can try. Here are some rolls. Here is a cake.’ Every time she would go to market she had a little something. My dad had no idea,” he says with a laugh.
“And at the age of six, I was even part of my mom’s marketing gimmicks,” he continues. “She would give me a basket of pastries to take to the bank and just sit there. I was a tiny little kid. I could barely count the money. These people took the pastries, pinched my cheeks, and put the money in my hands.”
As her business grew, she was able to add better kitchen appliances to the family’s home and even opened her own bakery on the first floor of their building. As the years progressed, his father began his own engineering shop as well.
“I grew up in a very business-oriented family,” he says. “But both of my parents were extremely committed to education.”
Which for them meant living well below their means to pay for the best possible education for their kids.
“Growing up I used to hate our home. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment. All four kids shared one bedroom, and all six of us shared one bathroom,” Yemofio says. “We lived like very poor people. But Dad made sure that we were going to private schools. He spent his money on education. And having gotten to eventually further his own education in Europe, he was absolutely determined that we weren’t going to go to university in Ghana.”
In 1996, after seven years of attending all-male boarding schools, Yemofio and his friends pored through books at the United States Information Services in Accra looking for colleges in the United States. He laughed as he added Wabash College to his list of potential schools.
“Can you believe it? An all-male school!” he says. “I made so much noise about it. Everyone laughed. I only put it on my list because of that.”
As he began to do more and more research, Wabash ranked high as hundreds of other schools dropped away. In all, he researched about 300 schools and wrote 56 of them by hand. He applied to six and got in to all of them.
“My dad had saved everything,” Yemofio says. “He was making about $3,000 a year. He had enough for me to get the first year. I needed to pay about $8,000 and I needed about $2,000 for my plane ticket. And that was all the man had for me. I had to sort out the rest of the way.”
Wabash’s generous aid moved the College to the top of his list and allowed him to follow his father’s dream of sending his first son to the United States for school.
Yemofio devoured economics classes with Professors Frank Howland and Bert Barreto and became well-versed in Excel. He took independent study courses in computer science with Professor John Zimmerman, and ultimately ended up majoring in math.
As he got ready for his first off-campus internship, he turned to his on-campus employer, Rob Herzog, who was working in the communications office and building Wabash’s first website.
“We were both figuring it out together,” Herzog says. “I recall his enthusiasm for learning new things, interest in technology, and just as important his reliability. I knew Scott Cougill ’87 was establishing a technology company and looking for interns so I recommended him to Scott.”
Herzog’s help wasn’t just that recommendation.
“I had no money to get there, no money to buy a shirt,” Yemofio says. “Rob gave me $100.”
Then, when Cougill found out Yemofio didn’t have a place to live for the summer, he invited him to live with his family.
“We had four kids under the age of nine so he got to join in the fun,” Cougill says. “I was a class agent and my wife, Cathren, and I were ‘all in’ for Wabash, so we offered.”
Then, Yemofio was set to graduate and had landed a job, but the dotcom bubble burst and his employment offer was rescinded. Robin Pebworth, former director of career services, learned of Yemofio’s situation. He got on the phone with Fred Wilson Jr. ’69 to ask for a favor. Wilson was president and CEO at Louis Vuitton at the time, and later retired as chairman and CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue.
“I hired summer interns and the Wabash guys always did great,” Wilson says. “Robin asked me to interview Godfred for a full-time job. He was smart, articulate, and an accomplished student. He was just impressive. It was a very easy hire.”
Yemofio just had to decide where he wanted to work—New York or San Francisco.
“Neither place meant anything to me,” Yemofio says. “All the women in career services said I should choose New York. I trusted them.”
He was assigned to the help desk thanks to the computer science courses he had taken and his internship with Cougill.
“I showed I could do things with Excel,” he says. “The CFO had a big presentation and was having trouble getting Excel charts into PowerPoint. All the IT guys said, ‘Talk to Godfred.’ Then they started talking to me about other things, and I ended up building an application in Excel.”
He continued in IT largely supporting the finance department and learning about the changing field of business intelligence until 2012 when he became an official member of the finance department. In November 2021, Yemofio was hired by Estée Lauder Companies in an expanded role.
“I know what finance people do and I can talk to them in that language, but I also understand the technical side,” he says. “Now at Estée Lauder, I’m in a similar role but it’s the first time I've been a director—stepping away from being a hands-on developer to being a bigger part of the strategy decisions.”
Yemofio learned about the company’s robust internship program, which hires approximately 100 undergraduate and graduate students a year, and asked permission to recruit Wabash students to the program.
Going full circle, he returned to campus for the Malcolm X Institute of Black Studies (MXIBS) 50th reunion and met Zennon Wilhelm ’23, who was hired as the first Wabash student to spend the summer in the finance department at Estée Lauder Companies in New York. There, he worked on an analysis application.
“I feel privileged and blessed. I had a little bit of an impostor syndrome when I first went to Estée Lauder with all the Ivy League people,” Wilhelm, the math major and physics minor from Michigan City, Indiana, says. “They’re picking the cream of the crop for internships, and everyone’s talking to me about how they got their internships. I just felt like I had it easy. I went through a pretty rigorous interview process, so I had to earn it. But I definitely did have a huge advantage based on the alumni connection. A lot of people apply and don’t even get a chance to interview.”
Yemofio sees helping Wilhelm get an interview for the internship opportunity as simply a first step in giving back to the place and the people who gave him so much.
“My depth of gratitude for Wabash…if I could carry Wabash on to the moon, I would,” he says. “Wabash transformed and changed my life. I know I’m still growing. I’m still on the journey. I feel like I am going to do something really significant in recognition of how significant Wabash has been.”
Wilson sums it up best.
“Godfred deserves the credit,” he says of Yemofio first joining Louis Vuitton more than 20 years ago. “He did it himself. He’s extremely gracious. The way I look at it is I opened the door, he walked in, and did really well.”