Internship Spotlight: Jason Kertayasa ’26, Kokoa Kamili
The Yale SOM alumni network helped Jason Kertayasa ’26 land an internship with a fair-trade cocoa distributor, which deepened his understanding of social enterprise management.
Internship company name and location: Kokoa Kamili, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Hometown: Fremont, California
Pronouns: he/him/his
The SOM classes you’re using on the job: Operations Engine, Competitor, Global Social Entrepreneurship
Go-to work lunch: Swahili street food (usually rice, beans, and chicken)
After-work routine: Walk on the beach, get a smoothie, go to an expat meet-up
Favorite thing about internship city: The weather in Dar es Salaam has been wonderful, and I’m pleasantly surprised by the diversity of food options.
This summer I worked as a strategic growth fellow at Kokoa Kamili, a cocoa social enterprise in Tanzania. The company buys raw cocoa beans from smallholder farmers, ferments them, dries them, and then exports them to chocolate makers across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. They are committed to giving farmers more cash for their crops and are currently paying the highest rates in Africa for cocoa. The business is a win-win for farmers and for chocolate makers who value Kokoa Kamili beans for being organic and having unique and fruity flavor notes.
I worked on various projects over the summer focused on strategy and operations. One of my main projects focused on vertical diversification into cocoa derivatives such as cocoa nibs, liquor, and butter. This involved doing market research and creating financial models to determine if it would make sense to produce these derivatives in Tanzania. In a similar project, I explored horizontal diversification in the form of other crops such as vanilla and essential oils. Finally, I also helped evaluate plans for a new factory, specifically focusing on process flows and material movement.
When I came to SOM, I was interested in making a pivot from my background in tech into the social impact space, but I wasn’t sure how I might actually accomplish that. I also hoped to spend the summer in sub-Saharan Africa, and I drew on SOM’s wide alumni network to get in touch with one of Kokoa Kamili’s co-founders, Brian LoBue ’08. I initially found him in the alumni database and emailed him to setup a virtual coffee chat, and I was fortunate that they were considering bringing a fellow on for the summer. I also prepared for an internship abroad by taking the course Global Social Entrepreneurship, through which I traveled to Brazil and worked with a local accelerator to improve its grant application process; this experience showed me how social enterprises balance making a profit with creating social impact.
This internship gave me a lot of unique experiences and taught me about agriculture, social enterprises, and East Africa. I split time between working at the office in Dar Es Salaam, the most populous city in Tanzania, and at the factory and farms in Mbingu, a village with about 15,000 residents. It was invaluable to meet the farmers and understand the day-to-day challenges they face, and to see the realities of working in rural East Africa. I made assumptions while creating models from my desk that were proven to be completely off-target when I visited the field and understood the context.
This internship also enabled me to explore the region, both professionally and for fun. I met many entrepreneurs and expats working for international multilateral organizations, such as the World Bank and the United Nations, and learned about their different fields and organizations. I also did a safari through the Serengeti, learned how to ride a motorcycle at the farm, and got my scuba certification on the Zanzibar archipelago. I’m grateful that I was able to leverage the SOM alumni network to make this internship happen and look forward to continuing to explore international social entrepreneurship opportunities in the second year of my MBA.
Jason Kertayasa is a recipient of the Frederick Frank ’54 BA Scholarship (2024–2025).
