News
July 02, 2010
"Star of Africa", Guardian UK
By Eva Wiseman, Guardian UK
June 13, 2010
She was one of the world's biggest fashion models and the first black face of Estée Lauder. But when Liya Kebede returned home to Ethiopia and saw the chronic problems of maternal health her career took a new turn. Her campaign continues – and now she has set her sights on sustainable fashion.
Flicking through Liya Kebede's pile of fashion magazine covers passes a calm and perfumed afternoon. In 2002, French Vogue declared May was "All About Liya" month, dedicating a whole issue to the African supermodel after the editor saw her in Tom Ford's Gucci catwalk show. Describing the day they first met, Ford recalls: "She looked me in the eyes, and I was quite literally stunned. Liya projects an aura of goodness and calm that outshines even her extraordinary physical beauty. Later in the day," Ford continues, "when trying to remember what she looked like, I could only remember her eyes."
Born 32 years ago in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, Kebede was spotted twice. The first time, as a teenager, took her to Paris, where she failed, homesick. When she returned to Ethiopia, she met her husband, a hedge-fund manager 20 years her senior, and it wasn't until the second time, aged 23 in Chicago, where the couple had set up home, that it stuck. In no time Kebede signed a £1.65m contract to become the first black face of Estée Lauder; her face and long, generous limbs sold underwear, handbags, evening dresses and Tiffany diamonds. She took a role in a Robert De Niro film, she was named 11th in a Forbes list of the world's top-earning models, she had a son and a daughter, Suhul and Raee, then in 2005 she took a breath…
We speak as she dashes through Manhattan between meetings. Taxis honk and men yell as she quietly talks about her childhood, growing up under "vast blue skies". She describes the "beautiful, raw land", the space. And then the way that New York shook her up, "the way it does everyone". It was when she returned to Ethiopia from the USA, where pregnancy is so celebrated, that she became involved in raising awareness of her home country's maternal health crisis. In Ethiopia a mother dies in childbirth every minute, leaving her baby 10 times less likely to survive past the age of two.
"There's a saying in Africa: To find out you are pregnant is to have one foot in the grave," she says. "Every time I go back home I'm introduced to women who've barely made it."
Her soft accent leaps from drawl to drawl as she remembers meeting an elderly woman who, after her daughter died giving birth to her third child, was forced to bring up her grandchildren alone. "She couldn't afford food, let alone schools, so the baby was given away. It was such a tragedy – not only did she lose her daughter but the whole family was destroyed. When, in an African community like that, a mother dies, it affects everyone."
In 2006 she set up the Liya Kebede Foundation. Her mission was to reduce maternal, newborn and child mortality in Ethiopia, and around the world. Funding advocacy and awareness-raising projects, as well as providing direct support for community-based education and training, the foundation's success led to her recognition by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader. While Kebede's aims are ambitious, she's particularly good at promoting the small, gentle steps towards life-changing aid. She talks, for instance, about the importance of providing torches to villages in developing countries, to light midwives' paths to the houses of women with no electricity, but she's clear, too, that there's no small solution to a global problem. "In these villages there are no roads, let alone hospitals. The last time I visited, I was told about a local woman who started bleeding halfway through delivering her child. The whole village carried her to hospital, but she died on the way." These are preventable deaths, she stresses.
NEWS ARCHIVE
2009
Gates Foundation Living Proof
Leaders Demand Action on MDG 5
Women Demand Action to Save Mothers
High Level UN Event for Maternal Health
It Girl, Vogue
"We Need a Global Fund for Moms," Huffin
Giant Magazine's Most Influential People
Liya Addresses UN Forum
Liya meets with Congressional Leaders on
Liya on Plum TV's Giving
Liya on the Today Show
"When Mothers Die," Giving Beast
Liya Joins Huffington Post
Liya Profiled in SOHO House
2008
Liya Visits Earthquake Devastated China
"She Who Cares Wins," Vogue Australia
Adolescent Girls Initiative
Women Leaders Dinner
Champions for an HIV Free Generation
2007
Liya Receives Orphan Ranger Award
Liya Featured on Al Jazeera's Riz Khan
Liya Speaks at the National Press Club
Deliver Now! Saving 77 Million by 2015
"Liya Rising," Vanity Fair
Liya Featured on CNN's Revealed
LKF Mother's Day Campaign
Liya Receives the Smart Cookie Award
Meeting of Women Parliamentarians
Liya in Marie Claire
Liya on Good Morning America
2006
Liya on the Oprah Winfrey Show
Liya in Self Magazine
LKF and Worldwide Orphans Foundation
WHO Highlights Impact of Fistula
A Message from Liya to the WHO
"Saving Mothers," Essence Magazine
2005
Liya in New York Times Style Magazine
Liya Kebede Addresses the UN
Liya Kebede Named Goodwill Ambassador