Sangu Delle always intended to support the educational institutions he attended, including Harvard College, HBS, and Harvard Law School, but he was planning to wait to give back until he’d achieved a certain level of success. However, one night he woke up from a nightmare and realized that he needed to start contributing immediately.

“In my dream, I died without having made good on many of my intentions,” says Delle, who had aspired to attend Harvard ever since he first heard of the university as a youngster in Ghana. “That nightmare changed my ideas about philanthropy. I realized I needed to start giving right away and as my means scaled, so too would my donations,” says Delle, who has supported the HBS Fund every year since he graduated and has served in multiple volunteer roles throughout the University including as a Leadership Giving Chair for his 5th HBS Reunion.

Now the subject of an HBS case study himself, Delle still regularly reviews his collection of cases from his days as an MBA in order to glean new insights. He was initially interested in earmarking his support for research and fellowships at HBS, and over time, he began to see the impact that providing unrestricted HBS Fund support can have. “The deeper I got into the Harvard ecosystem, the more I saw the power of flexible funding,” he says, citing the School’s ability to develop hybrid classrooms in response to COVID-19 as an example. “What better way to support an organization than to give its leaders what they need to lead,” says Delle, who had the opportunity to work with his former Design Thinking professor, Dean Srikant Datar, when Datar led a group of faculty members on an immersion trip to Africa in 2019.

Delle runs several organizations centered on Africa: He is CEO of Africa Health Holdings which works to improve the health care system in West and East Africa and has 38 facilities, 52 community outreach programs, and serves more than 500,000 patients; chairman of Golden Palm Investments, an impact investment firm that invests in tech startups across the continent; and cofounder of Cleanacwa, a nonprofit that works on water and sanitation in his homeland.

Consistent with his focus on helping Africa manage its challenges and capitalize on its strengths, Delle is also supporting HBS’s Global Opportunity: Africa Fellowship, a loan forgiveness program for recent graduates who want to put their skills to work in Africa. “I want to do whatever I can to counter the brain drain,” he says. And he believes that his donation will be multiplied because of the School’s ability to leverage its impact. “I think that making a gift to Harvard has the highest return on investment,” he says. “Harvard has the power to be a catalyst for change. It is the gold standard.”

When thinking about his own philanthropy, Delle stresses the people who benefit from his support. “When you make a gift, you are transforming lives,” he says, noting that his life was transformed by those who supported the fellowships he received. “When I first came to Harvard, I couldn’t believe that someone who had never met me was helping to pay for my education.” To Delle, that is one of the most amazing gifts that anyone can give—or receive.

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