Tjada D’Oyen McKenna is the first woman — and Black — to head the international charity Mercy Corps, an organization based in the United States that she has led since 2020. She has moved in and out of the public and private sectors over her career only to discover that “I’m living my purpose,” she said, in working for the former, even if it means “doing more with less” as the number of people with staggering needs keep growing worldwide.
She is also resolved to not only helping other women achieve their highest ambitions but also to enabling women of color. “I am hoping there will be more of us — women and CEOs — so that seeing people like me can become normal and not a novelty,” McKenna said.
McKenna was born into relative privilege in Washington to parents who worked in public service: her mother was a government lawyer, and her father a senior leader in community college systems. When she was younger, she wanted to follow in those civic-minded footsteps, but a summer internship working at the General Electric Corporation when she was 16 led her to a decade-long stint in the business world.
The internship helped McKenna discover the opportunities that the private sector offered, she told PassBlue during an interview over Zoom. McKenna, 47, now heads a global organization that provides essential services to people caught in the middle of wars and disasters — far from the corporate world where she started her career. Her experience working at profit-making companies, like McKinsey & Company, American Express, General Electric — and a job in civil service under former President Barack Obama — prepared her for what she calls the “social impact world.”
“Our nonprofit institutions are also businesses,” she said. “Understanding the business angle and the efficiency. It has helped in terms of being able to work with private sector actors, have those relationships and maximize them for social benefits. So there’s a bit of translation I’m able to do as well. We have our heart, we have our values, but we also are running organizations of people. And there are lots of business elements involved in that.”
McKenna, who still lives in DC, earned a bachelor’s degree in government and a master’s in business administration from Harvard. She grew up with books and skipped kindergarten because she knew how to read early, thanks to her older siblings. But McKenna’s childhood was not just about the comfort her family provided her. She was also aware of the color of her skin and how people treated her.
McKenna said she had a happy childhood and acknowledged the privileges she had — traveling to Paris when she was 11 — but said that helping others is where she finds joy. That joy motivated her to leave her high-paying corporate job in 2015 to move to the public sector and ultimately to the nonprofit arena.
“I just decided I needed to follow my passion and that I would have enough to live even with the major pay cut,” she said. “Now, I feel like everything that I’m trying to do in life is very aligned. I feel very good about my family life. I feel like I’m living my purpose.”
McKenna still earns a decent wage at Mercy Corps. According to Comparably, a website that estimates salary scales of major companies, the average earning of an executive at Mercy is $231,038. The highest-paid executive makes $450,000, and the lowest, $53,000.
As the leader of Mercy Corps, which has posts in 40 countries in Africa, the Mideast, Asia and Latin America, McKenna manages 6,000 personnel who support the needs of some 37 million people. Afghanistan is the group’s longest continuous country presence. The organization is also working, for example, in Gaza, where Palestinians are nearly on the fence of famine, according to the United Nations, because of the Israeli Defense Forces’ continuing bombardment on the enclave as they aim to wipe out Hamas. As McKenna tweeted on Dec. 24: “We need a sustained ceasefire, end to the siege and ability to massively scale-up humanitarian assistance.”
In this interview for PassBlue’s Women as Changemakers column, McKenna discusses her childhood, what drives her professionally and what it means to be the first woman leader of Mercy Corps.
The interview has been edited and condensed for brevity.
PassBle: What was six-year-old Tjada like?
McKenna: I learned to read at a young age. And I skipped kindergarten because I knew how to read early and was reading quite well. I also am the youngest child and bit of an only child, because my siblings are 11 and 12 years older than I am. I was into everything, especially things that adults were into. I was curious, and I had maybe too much attention from my parents. My favorite room in my house was this huge library. Since I grew up in Washington, every morning the Washington Post would come and my family would sit around to read. I was also the only Black student in my elementary school.
PassBlue: What was it like being the only Black girl in class?
McKenna: I grew up in the 1980s, meaning that my parents were children in the 50s and 60s and had attended segregated schools. They were fearful for me and there were one or two instances where presumptions were made. For example, when I showed up in first grade, I was sent to remedial reading on the first day when in actuality I read far above grade level. I knew that I looked different, that my hair was different, but it was still a happy childhood. Things got more difficult when we entered the teenage years because that’s when people start having crushes and forming relationships and that was all very segregated.
PassBlue: How did your family shape you as a person?
McKenna: My parents were very much children of the 60s civil rights movement. They were a bit pan-Africanist as well. So I’ve always had a strong sense of who I was, belonging in a community and being a product of and a representative of Black America. The phrase that my family used a lot was, you have to work twice as hard to get the same. So I always have this sense of difference and the need to excel for my community. But also to get my fair shot. There are moments when I think people will judge me and think I am hopping on an issue. My generation was trained to fit in and to thrive by fitting in, but I am not scared of people thinking I am self-serving. Being the Black girl in the room means I have to talk about diversity, brace myself for it, and acknowledge that it is O.K.
PassBlue: What was Harvard like for you as a Black student?
McKenna: I enjoyed being around a Black community at Harvard. We supported each other and stuck together as we navigated it all. Harvard is where I became aware of the hidden tax of being a Black student in white environments. For example, as a community we would help high school students with admissions essays, help younger people, do volunteer work. There was a well-known conservative professor on campus whose name was Harvey Mansfield. He made a statement that grade inflation was rampant and linked to affirmative action.
We had the stress of people casting doubt as to why we were at the school and then we spent extra time protesting that professor. I realized during those protests that non-Black people didn’t have these extra burdens and could spend the time studying or focusing. It almost felt like a trap. But I am grateful for my time at Harvard and the connections and friends I made. We are all still very supportive of one another.
PassBlue: Was there a particular incident or certain events growing up that deeply influenced you?
McKenna: I went to high school in a town [Stamford, Conn.] that was very corporate. I happened to get this internship at GE. It was the first time I realized that there was a lot of power and opportunity in the private sector. Until that point, I thought that the public sector — government and legislation — were the way to really drive change.
PassBlue: But you left the private sector. How was the transition?
McKenna: At some point in the private sector, I realized I was working so hard and giving so much of myself, but I wasn’t fully fulfilled. But the other side is that in an environment where people are being asked to do more with less, where the needs of the world are greater and greater, we have to realize that our nonprofit institutions, they’re also businesses. We also have to operate efficiently, we have to understand the bottom line, we have to make trade-offs and market economies for our staff, so we can serve our participants. I was working really hard, I didn’t have a lot of opportunity for a personal life, I certainly wasn’t volunteering and engaging in the community, as much as I thought I would. I wasn’t saving anyone’s life, I wasn’t having the impact that I would die being proud of. At some point, I just decided I needed to follow my passion and that I would have enough to live on even with the major pay cut. Now, I feel like everything that I’m trying to do in life is very aligned. I feel very good about my family life. I feel like I’m living my purpose. The other thing I have to acknowledge is that if I hadn’t been successful, if it wasn’t what I thought it would be, I still had the credentials to go back to the private sector. I have the privilege of two Harvard degrees and fallback options.
PassBlue: Do you think annual gatherings like the United Nations General Assembly, or UNGA, in September move humanitarian development forward?
McKenna: One thing I learned in government is this concept of “announceables.” Let me explain: The thing that events like these do, particularly for officials and think tanks, is that it’s a moment when everyone’s going to show up. So people prepare for milestones to either announce a partnership or new funding or debut a paper that further highlights the issues. So, things like this are a natural reinforcing mechanism to make people prove that they’re walking the walk. This year’s UNGA felt disjointed, and yet it was all connected. The war in Ukraine, Covid, had terrible impacts on all the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals] and further created a climate for more conflict and more poverty and things that are driving some of the political instability we have today. So all these things are so connected. I do feel like the global South is asserting itself more and I hope that those assertions, and just the interconnectedness of it all, will lead to more investments to help the populations of those countries.
PassBlue: How does it feel to be the first woman CEO of Mercy Corps?
McKenna: I have loved leading Mercy Corps, it’s one of the great development humanitarian organizations. So many of the people we serve and our employee base are people of color, so in that sense, it’s been wonderful. There are different things we face as women. I have two young children. So being a CEO with two young children is different. My 10-year-old has Googled me at school and sees me come up. He is very proud. He likes to tell people, my mom is a CEO, and he also has picked up that that is rare. So, I am hoping there will be more of us — women and CEOs — so that seeing people like me can become normal and not a novelty. My leadership style is straightforward. It’s authentic. Frankly, the busier I get, the less time I have to mask and pretend that I’m someone I am not. I will acknowledge my flaws, I’ll acknowledge my weak sides and really try to build a team that complements those.
PassBlue: What have been the challenges of managing Mercy Corps?
McKenna: There are sector challenges that we all have, like, how do we keep attention on issues? My personal challenge is that I push conversation on diversity, because I think it’s the only way to be a leading organization in the future. I think we have to mirror the populations we serve. I’ve gotten used to being the outlier in a room. I’ve gotten used to walking into the room with all men, or with all very affluent people, because those are the funders. But it can feel lonely at times as well. Or when your perspective is just so vastly different, that can feel lonely. I’m happy that I get to be in the room. I keep reminding myself that it’s good that I’m in the room, even when I feel out of place or I stick out like a sore thumb. I appreciate the support I get from others. Helene Gayle was the first to lead CARE a decade ago. She was the first Black woman to lead an organization like this. She checks in on me. So it’s also nice to have a little village of support.
PassBlue: How has conflict around the world impacted the work that you do at Mercy Corps?
McKenna: One unique thing about Mercy Corps is that in addition to having a mandate around humanitarian assistance development, we also have a third pillar that’s equally as strong, around conflict avoidance and peace-building. Because of that we’ve always tended to thrive and work in places that are the most difficult to be in. As soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, the next trip I made, I went to Poland. Then I went to Lebanon and saw the impacts of food prices right away. A little while later, I went to Somalia in the midst of one of the worst droughts in history and is now dealing with this impact of even more-expensive and more-scarce food and all the humanitarian resources being diverted. We have had large programs in Sudan, in Niger and the Central African Republic. We’ve constantly been in the midst of this. Afghanistan is our longest continuous country presence. We’ve been there since the 80s. We were there with the first Taliban. Our biggest funders have a war right in their backyard, so the Russian war in Ukraine has affected our work. That’s where it comes back to the business aspect of our work. We just have to do more with less.
This article has been updated to correct the town where McKenna went to high school (Stamford, Conn.) and the number of Mercy Corps employees (6,000).
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Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
