March, 2026
It is Wednesday.
I am in Detroit.
I have just completed my move from the capital of Michigan: Lansing, to the City of Detroit to build my new venture: Q2 Systems—a company of Bien Corporation.
I write these words sitting on the seventh floor of a twenty-five floor high rise on the waterfront.
I have been listening to Driemo and Gwamba’s ‘Yonseyi‘ on repeat since yesterday.
When I look out the window, I see Canada staring right back at me across the river.
Life has a way of arranging moments like this. I am taking this very brief moment to look around for a second.
Twelve years.
That is roughly how long it has taken to get here.
I find myself pulling at the threads.
Small bricks. Small decisions. Tiny turns that, at the time, did not seem important.
Tiny turns that led us to precisely where we are.
Lessons Conversation
Delve into Business and International Development with Nthanda Manduwi
Episode 3: Rebuilding Detroit | Lessons Daily
After a month of living in the city, I attended a Detroit Economic Growth Corporation event where the City of Detroit was awards 13 businesses with grants amounting to $300,000.
The room was filled with founders, policymakers, and ecosystem builders gathered around a shared objective: increasing the probability that companies are built and sustained here.
I really like how the City of Detroit is approaching their entrepreneurship programming. It is quite deliberate: municipal grants, residency stipends, coworking access, and roles like Director of Entrepreneurship are all designed to reduce friction and create density.
As someone who is both an entrepreneur and a policy analyst, I find myself more than curious. From the inside, the strategy feels coherent. Capital is being deployed, networks are forming, and leadership is aligned around making Detroit competitive for builders.
But the city reveals itself differently once you leave that room. Moving through Detroit with the Director of Youth Affairs, Jerjuan Howard, the layers begin to separate.
Institutional support, ecosystem energy, and neighborhood reality do not fully overlap—they operate in parallel. Jerjuan’s work—through debate programs, public space, and the Howard Family Bookstore—exists at the level where rebuilding becomes physical and immediate.
His question at the end of the day to me,“Do you plan to stay?” left me reflecting on what I hope to gain from and give to Detroit.
Thanks for reading Lessons Conversation! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this work.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit podcast.lessonsconversation.com
March 26, 2026
March 26, 2026
March 25, 2026
Search Results placeholder
A small rewind
I have been thinking about March lately.
March seems to be when my life quietly reorganizes itself.
March, 2026
I have just moved to Detroit to build Q2.
March, 2025
I had just landed in Madrid, Spain, for my study abroad with the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University.
March, 2024
I was in Manhattan completing the incorporation of my non-profit, Ntha Foundation, as a 501(c)(3), while preparing to complete my mission with the United Nations.
March, 2023
I was living what was, honestly, a fairly magical life in Manhattan.
March, 2022
I was wrapping up my life in Lilongwe, Malawi, preparing to move to the United States to join the UN in New York.
March, 2021
My organization had just received a $250,000 grant from the World Bank to build innovation hubs in Malawi.
At that exact moment, I had enrolled in my first Master’s degree.
I could go further back.
I probably should.
But for now, 2021 feels like a good place to begin pulling the threads.
The Road to Motor City
There was a time—not too long ago—when all I wanted was to be a travel and lifestyle blogger in Malawi.
To write.
To photograph food.
To tell stories.
Life, as it tends to do, had other plans. Or perhaps it simply had larger versions of the same plan.
The blogging turned into storytelling.
The storytelling turned into organizations.
The organizations turned into companies.
And somehow, one brick at a time, the road lands us here today.
Detroit.
Why Detroit?
Detroit to me feels like a reset.
The past few years of my life have been motion. Constant forward motion.
New York.
Torino.
Pattaya.
Lansing.
Redmond.
Madrid.
Always always moving.
Detroit, however, feels different.
Detroit feels like a moment to pause as my companies scale.
It is a city that understands reinvention better than most places on Earth. It built the modern industrial world. It lost it. And now it is rebuilding something new.
That energy resonates deeply with me.
It is an economy that is not so advanced that everything feels abstract, but also not so fragile that ambition feels unrealistic.
Things here still make sense.
You can see the bones of industry.
You can see the possibility of what comes next.
And somewhere within that possibility, I see a place for Q2.
Q2
Q2 is my new venture—what I went to Michigan State University to build: a company of Bien Corporation.
Bien began as a creative company—an attempt to bring high-quality storytelling and branding to businesses in Malawi and across Africa.
But over time, a lot interesting things happened.
The work started pointing toward larger systems.
Technology.
Infrastructure.
Platforms.
Q2 is the next chapter of that journey.
I am excited to spend the next year [and perhaps more] exploring what this company can become.
The Season Ahead
More than anything, this next chapter feels personal to me.
For a long time, my life has been about building things for others. Communities. Platforms. Organizations.
Detroit feels like a moment to also build something within myself.
Over the next year, I hope to spend time doing the following:
Writing.
Telling the stories I have been carrying for years.
Reflecting.
Pulling at the threads of the last decade and understanding how the pieces fit together.
Resting.
Allowing my mind the space to breathe after years of constant motion.
Building Q2.
Carefully and thoughtfully shaping what this company can become.
Making new friends.
Every city teaches you something through the people you meet.
Finding myself again.
Perhaps the most important work of all.
Spring
I arrived in Detroit at the very beginning of spring.
The trees have not yet bloomed.
The air still carries the last breath of winter.
But something is shifting.
Soon the city will turn green again.
And, if I am lucky, so will parts of my own life.
So for now, I write.
I reflect.
And I look forward to seeing what blooms next.
—
Ntha
Detroit, Michigan
March 2026
Read my Published Works:
If you’d like to go deeper into my journey — from Malawi, through the United Nations to Microsoft, you can find it in my books.
P.S. for 2026, you can get any of my books via Kindle for only $2.99.
This offer is valid till the end of the year.
Links to purchase are as below:
Get a Snippet of and Preorder My Upcoming Books:
CONNECT WITH NTHANDA ONLINE:
About the Author
