Mekonen F. Kassa is Senior Director for cloud cyber security engineering at Microsoft company where he has worked for about 22 years now. Living in Seattle, he earned his first degree in mechanical engineering and second degree in information systems management from Washington University. Prior, he worked as a consultant and taxi driver.
After witnessing the politically-led massacre of nine of his teenage friends in his birthplace of Gondar 37 years ago, he fled to Sudan traveling on foot for fifteen days. Escaping from the Amracuba refugee camp in Sudan, he worked as a daily laborer on commercial farms, as a servant, and on other jobs in Algadari and Khartoum. After four years in Sudan, he found Ethiopians who sponsored his move to Seattle 33 years ago. He recently flew back to his hometown to inaugurate the library he built for his old elementary school.