Middlebury Magazine

  • Recent Stories
  • Menu
    • Features
    • Essays
    • Q&A
    • Podcasts
    • Review
    • Videos
    • About
    • Advertising
    • Contact
    • Support
    • Writers’ Guidelines
  • Search

Winter 2021 Features

The Man Who Saw in Technicolor

Two years after his death, remembering Jason Spindler up close.

By Ellen Halle '13
Illustration by Vanessa Lovegrove
January 29, 2021
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • Email icon

On January 15, 2019, Jason Spindler died in a terrorist attack in Nairobi. When the attack happened, he was sitting in the courtyard of the office complex, broad shoulders hunched over a laptop. It was late afternoon, when the shadows lengthen and the sun slants, lighting up the dust like tiny diamonds.

“He probably never even saw the guy, right?” I reasoned via WhatsApp with former coworkers. When news broke of the attack, those who were in Kenya fervently tried to find Jason, while those of us in America scoured the internet. Later, I tracked down grainy CCTV footage, watched it over and over until I became inured: the bomber standing stoically outside the café, smoothing his shirt, looking for a split second like he wanted to change his mind.

Jason was my boss at I-DEV International, a business strategy firm that specializes in emerging markets; Jason was one of the co-founders. He was why I moved to Nairobi; perhaps he saw something in me; perhaps I happened to show up at the right time with my unpolished excitement about business in emerging markets, a field in which I had zero experience. I was 23 and eager to leave New York. When I stepped out into the Nairobi night—Swahili beats tinny on airport speakers, the faint smell of burning rubber in the air—I felt I could finally breathe.

The job was fascinating and grueling. I-DEV’s advisory of businesses across Africa took me to the unswept corners of the region, often with Jason. We interviewed customers in one-room shanties and traipsed through markets that sold brightly colored plastic buckets, Chinese solar panels, skinned goats hung up by their feet. We cooked meals with women in refugee camps to understand their cooking practices, Jason introducing himself in Swahili that was equal parts enthusiastic and incomprehensible. We traveled via cars, motorcycles, ancient planes outfitted with leather seats and ashtrays. At the end of our days in the field, we debriefed over warm beers at cheap hotels. Jason was most alive then—bubbling with ideas, motivated by the most intractable problems.

Back at the office, Jason’s management was calamitous. He would wake in the middle of the night and send long, infuriating texts about projects. Paychecks were delayed. Timelines were upended. “I think we need to change our recommendation . . . ,” he would say two hours before deadline, leaning back dramatically in his chair, tapping a sneaker on the worn parquet floor. Risk management was not Jason’s forte. He lit up after learning we could embed with UN troops in war-torn Eastern Congo to conduct research. “Merci beaucoup,” he said to the general after a safety briefing about the likelihood of kidnapping.

At Jason’s funeral we drank too much wine and stared across the table at one another, unsure of what to say. We were a motley crew, handpicked by Jason for reasons not easily distilled into job descriptions. Eventually, we shared memories. Jason’s proclamation—and emphatic enforcement—of a company policy mandating that employees take a day off during their birthday week. (“To travel,” he had said, as if it were obvious.) The early days working out of Jason’s living room, its walls adorned with lizards that found their way inside from the garden. An ill-fated team whitewater rafting trip. The time he drove us three hours into the Rift Valley to tour a hydroelectric facility because he “thought it would be cool.” It was Jason who had taught us to think critically, to be driven by boundless curiosity, to be incredulous in the face of injustice.

We had weathered his shortcomings—he was human, after all—to see this crazy, beautiful world in Jason’s technicolor. We are better for it.

Ellen Halle ’13 is an MBA/MPA candidate at the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

 Jason Spindler was the CEO and cofounder of I-DEV International, a consulting firm and financial advisory focused on frontier markets. He was an instructor in the Middlebury Institute of International Studies Frontier Market Scouts program for several years.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Stories

Features

A Dog’s Life

A filmmaker takes us into the minds of the animals who are part of our families.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Photograph by Randal Ford
April 4, 2025

On Parenting

Caitlin McCormick Murray ’05 has some thoughts on what it means to be a good mom.

By Frederick Reimers ’93
Photograph by Justin Patterson
March 15, 2025

Object Lessons

Curator Rebekah Irwin sees Middlebury's Special Collections as a laboratory, where antiquities meet utility.

By Caroline Crawford
Photograph by Adam Detour
August 23, 2024

Seeing the Forest for the Trees

How one alumna is embracing a distinctive reforesting technique that promotes accelerated ecological benefits.

By Elena Valeriote, MA Italian '19 in conversation with Hannah Lewis '97
Illustrations by Karlotta Freier
August 16, 2024

Dispatches

Thanks for the Memories

A student-curated exhibit explores the Middlebury experience through more than a century of undergrad scrapbooks.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photographs by Todd Balfour
May 5, 2025

Fear Factor

A scientific model—and work of art—warns of the next pandemic.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photograph by Jonathan Blake
April 4, 2025

From NESCAC to NFL?

Thomas Perry '25 has a shot at playing football on Sundays.

By Matt Jennings
Photograph by Rodney Wooters
March 11, 2025

Words in Space

A NASA interpreter bridges the language gap, one mission at a time.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Illustrations by Davide Bonazzi
February 15, 2025

Keeping Her Stick on the Ice

An alumna’s passion for ice hockey puts her in the record books.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Illustration by Connie Noble
January 26, 2025

Watch Party

Henry Flores ’01 builds a community of collectors.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photograph by Hubert Kolka
January 15, 2025

A Man of Letters

The art of letter writing may be in decline, but one alumnus has kept it alive in a unique way.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Photograph used with the permission of Melvin B. Yoken
October 9, 2024

If the Sneaker Fits

Adam King ’05 brings an Asian aesthetic—and celebrates Asian American culture—with his startup, 1587 Sneakers.

By Jessie Raymond ’90
Photograph by Sasha Greenhalgh
August 22, 2024

Jacob Shammash and the Gift of the Torah

A story of two journeys.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photographs by Paul Dahm
April 21, 2024
View All

Essays

Shear Madness

A yarn shop owner with no livestock experience takes an unlikely detour.

By Lindsey Spoor, MA French ’08
Illustration by Ben Kirchner
April 4, 2025

Q&A

37 Minutes with Lorraine Besser

The professor and philosopher talks about the three elements of the “good life”—especially the one happiness culture overlooks.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photograph by Oliver Parini
April 4, 2025

Quotation

A summer immersed in a language can do wonders, as veterans of Middlebury College’s famous language-learning program can attest. The lockdown is clearly going to amount to the equivalent of about two summers, and there are mini-Middleburys happening in millions of houses worldwide.”

—John McWhorter, writing “The Coronavirus Generation Will Use Language Differently” in the Atlantic.

Podcasts

The Exit Interview with Middlebury President Laurie L. Patton

With her presidency at Middlebury coming to an end, the host of this podcast becomes its final guest.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
December 18, 2024

The Monterey Trialogue: A Distinct Take on Superpower Diplomacy featuring Anna Vassilieva and Peter Slezkine

Our guests for episode six of season three are Anna Vassilieva and Peter Slezkine, the folks behind the Monterey Trialogue—which brings together leading experts from the United States, China, and Russia for in-depth discussions of their countries' interests and concerns in the vital regions of the world.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
July 19, 2024

Education as the Great Equalizer, featuring Annie Weinberg ’10

Our guest for episode five of season three is Annie Weinberg '10, the founder and executive director of Alexander Twilight Academy, an educational catalyst program in Boston, Massachusetts, that supports students from under-resourced backgrounds.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
March 14, 2024

Review

Editors’ Picks for March and April

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
April 10, 2025

Editors’ Picks for January and February

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
February 14, 2025

Long Live Brazenhead

Out of a secret bookstore comes a unique literary review.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Photograph by Todd Balfour
January 13, 2025

Videos

Creating Community Through Hip Hop

For three days in March, the sounds, styles, and fashions of global hip hop converged on Middlebury for an electric symposium.

By Jordan Saint-Louis '24
April 17, 2023

Pomp and Unusual Circumstances

As viewed from above.

By Chris Spencer
June 1, 2021

Davis the Owl Returns Home

Having recovered from life-threatening injuries, a beautiful winged creature is released to its natural habitat.

By Andrew Cassell
April 22, 2021
Middlebury College
  • Alumni
  • Newsroom
  • Contact Us
  • icon-instagram

The views presented are not necessarily those of the editors or the official policies of the College.

© 2025 Middlebury College Publications.