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Headstrong for education: GE employees trek to construct schools in third-world countries

June 05, 2017

The prospect of learning new skills is what attracted Daniel Rhollans to GE’s OMLP rotations: Program management, inventory control, advanced manufacturing – all tremendous opportunities for an early career employee.


He never thought he would be learning to head-balance water buckets!  Daniel’s “headstrong” skillset was refined during a GE-sponsored trek to Malawi, Africa to begin construction of a buildOn school.  


Daniel, currently based in Clearwater, FL., and other leadership program employees share a passion with buildOn founder and former GE employee Jim Ziolkowski, who sparked the movement 26 years ago.  As a result, more than 1,100 schools now serve boys and girls in third-world countries.



While enabling education in faraway villages was not on Sarah Byrne’s career plan, her finance position in GE’s leadership program provided an opportunity to join other GE employees to help break the cycle of poverty, illiteracy and low expectations through GE’s support of buildOn.


Most recently, Sarah, who’s currently working in Boston, traveled to Senegal to help build a GE-sponsored school


See if you can find Sarah at work, constructing buildOn’s 1000th school:


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