Q&A with Greg Tarrant, COO of Redeem International
Landing Rock serves many nonprofit organizations and strives to offer valuable insights to our customers, and the markets in which they operate. Recently we interviewed Greg Tarrant, Chief Operating Officer of Redeem International.
LR: Hi Greg, you’ve been around this nonprofit world for quite a while. Can you give us a brief history of your own personal and nonprofit background?
GT: My background includes five years of working in finance, five years starting and running a Spanish language immersion school in Mexico, then shifting to the nonprofit sector and spending a decade with International Justice Mission before accepting the opportunity to become Chief Operating Officer at Redeem International. At Redeem I am leveraging my field, finance and general management experience to structure our treasury, accounting and technology services so they are user friendly for all our global staff while still being as efficient as possible.
LR: Was there anything about your past experiences which lead you to join Redeem International?
GT: Living and working across Uganda, Bolivia, and Kenya for seven years gave me a front-row seat to the transformative power of well-executed development programs. Because Redeem was established to scale a highly successful pilot initiative, I saw an incredible opportunity to maximize global impact by taking those core learnings and focusing rigorously on operational efficiency.
LR: In a nutshell can you tell us what the mission is for Redeem International?
GT: Redeem International’s mission is to protect the homes and land of the world’s most vulnerable widows and orphans. In rural Africa, land is life. Land is a family’s primary source of food, income, shelter, and security. Unfortunately, because the laws written to protect them are rarely enforced, land owned by widows and orphans is under constant threat by land grabbers – violent criminals who use violence, fraud, and intimidation to tear these women and children from the homes they live in and the land they depend on for survival.
To protect these widows and orphans from the devastation of land grabbing, Redeem deploys teams of local justice professionals to intervene on their behalf. These teams partner with local law enforcement authorities in individual land grabbing cases – restoring victims to their homes, prosecuting offenders for their crimes, and making accountability visible in the communities they serve. These actions change the risk-reward calculus for would-be land grabbers, deterring future victimizations, and creating the safety widows and orphans need to prosper.
LR: I wish I could say something more eloquent than “wow”, but wow, that sounds like intense and sorely needed work you’re doing. And I hope it doesn’t sound callous, but Africa is a far away place for many of us Americans. Why should we be concerned about what’s happening in places like Uganda?
GT: In Uganda, land theft from a vulnerable widow or orphan is a matter of life and death. At Redeem, we have successfully shifted the risk-reward balance for would-be perpetrators, creating a scalable model that currently protects over a million people at a cost of under $3 per person. For an investment-minded individual, this represents an incredible value—an opportunity to provide the security Ugandan families need to safely use their own land and prosper.
LR: Greg, thank you so much for taking the time to educate us about your organization. We love hearing directly from people like you who are doing such impactful work. Best of luck with your continued efforts and we look forward to an update in the future!
Disclosure: Insights content is not financial advice. Please be sure to do your own due diligence and speak to your financial advisor before making any investment decisions.