Michael Bervell is pursuing an MBA at Harvard Business School. Michael is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, author, and graduate of Harvard College, where he studied philosophy. He is the best-selling author of “Unlocking Unicorns,” a book he wrote as a communications master’s student at the University of Washington that features the stories of successful startup founders in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. 

Prior to business school, Michael worked at M12, Microsoft’s Venture Capital Fund, as an investor in early-stage technology companies, and at Databook, an early-stage technology company, as chief-of-staff. Since 2007, Michael has been executive director of Hugs For, an international nonprofit he co-founded as a sixth grader to deliver material and monetary donations to hospitals, orphanages, and schools in Ghana. The organization has since expanded to also support over 300,000 children in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and the United States. He was recognized for his work with the National Caring Award in 2015 alongside Pope Francis and Dikembe Mutombo. 

He is an Elected Director of the Harvard Alumni Association, former President of the Harvard Club of Seattle, and avid jazz drummer. In his free time, he bakes, dances salsa and bachata, or blogs to more than 750,000 readers through his blog BillionDollarStartupIdeas.com.