Founders Rebecca Haile and Jean Manas experienced firsthand the transformative power of a great education, and were inspired to expand such opportunity to others. Haile-Manas Academy, named after their family, took root in a former barley field—and is now home to a bold vision for Ethiopia’s future.

A woman standing in a green field of tall grass or wheat during sunny weather, with a partly cloudy sky and distant trees and hills in the background.
Man standing on a construction site wearing a safety vest and sunglasses, with dirt and construction materials in the background.
A woman in a yellow safety vest touches water gushing from a broken pipe at a construction site, with other workers in safety gear nearby.

Dear Friends,

This odyssey started with our desire to have an impact. We opted to do so by investing in transformatory education because our lives have been shaped by such education, in our younger years abroad and in our later years in the United States. Those experiences informed our belief that transformative education is truly an ideal investment for maximum long-term impact on young people and their communities. 

We began by contributing time and resources to our alma matters, Jean to his high school in Istanbul and both Jean and Rebecca to their universities in the United States.  We soon realized that such investments would go furthest in Rebecca’s homeland of Ethiopia (a country of 120 million people) where opportunities for transformatory education were and remain sparse. Rebecca’s personal connection also meant that our investment was likely to be embraced and supported locally.

Soon, we and our family were standing in the middle of an 8-hectare barley field a couple hours’ drive from Addis, alongside visionary government officials, including the then governor of the Amhara region, architects and engineers. Today, that field is home to an amazing school engaged in the best of transformatory education: a place where motivated students from across Ethiopia come to think, learn, grow, question, challenge and begin to impact. What started as an idea is now a thriving and engaged community, one we love dearly. 

And it’s a community that is already beginning to have an impact across the country, through its students and through the example it is setting, and across the world, through its graduates many of whom are now studying in the most prominent universities globally. 

Thank you for joining us for this odyssey—your strong support has helped our vision come to life and allows us to take the project from strength to strength. 

With gratitude,
Jean & Rebecca

Group of diverse children and two adults outdoors, standing on rocky ground with a large rock overhang behind them.
Group of four young girls and a woman standing outdoors, smiling, with a school building in the background.
A man in a black vest and white shirt pointing at a map on a large screen in a conference room, with snacks and water bottles on a table below.
Architectural scale model of a school or campus with sports fields, a running track, classrooms, and surrounding landscaping.
Group of five people standing outside, smiling, with a building in the background. Four are wearing traditional clothing with yellow and black embroidery. A man in a blue suit stands in the center with his arms around the others.