Class in electricity jump-starts a move from Kenya to Cambridge
This is one in a series of profiles showcasing some of Harvard’s stellar graduates. Billy Koech was an electrical engineer before he even knew what one was. As a teenager, he owned a pair of headphones with an FM receiver, but he had no way of transmitting music from his smartphone to the headphones. Not one to leave a problem unsolved, Koech found a YouTube tutorial, taught himself to solder, and built an FM transmitter that enabled the devices to connect. For Koech, it seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. “I’ve always been a tinkerer and enjoyed working with my hands,” he said. “Growing up, I remember taking a radio apart to see what was inside, then taking different pieces off and putting them back on to see what would happen to the device.” Growing up in Kenya, Koech had the opportunity to take an electricity class at his high school, where he became...