Lipscomb University

Making a Difference in Africa

By Shannon Dennis

Morgan Davis ('70) has kept his nose to the grindstone to create a highly successful career since his college graduation. But with plenty of accomplishments under his belt in the business world, his most important accomplishment may be his latest – serving on the board of the African Development Foundation, an organization that provides $250,000 in grants to marginalized communities in Africa.

Davis has worked in the insurance business for several years and currently lives in California and serves on the boards of directors for Montpelier Re Holdings, OneBeacon Insurance Group, Esurance Holdings Inc. and White Mountains Insurance Group. His wife, Sandy Lattimore Davis ('72), helped inspire his latest endeavor at the African Development Foundation.

Morgan Davis graduated from Lipscomb with a mathematics degree and a Master of Business Administration. His knack for crunching numbers, solving problems, helping people with their claims and ensuring the company responded to the customers’ needs enabled him to succeed in the insurance world. As a result of his success, he and his family have lived all over the country in such places as Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle and San Francisco. He and his wife enjoy the sense of adventure that comes with traveling and moving.

Their biggest adventure came when they traveled past the borders of North America to Jos, Nigeria, in Africa. They have traveled to Jos about a dozen times to help fund and build an AIDS clinic called Faith Alive as well as to serve in various communities in Africa in any way they could.
 
Sandy Davis worked as a staff member at a congregation in Bay Side when she felt called to go on a mission trip to Nigeria. While there, she saw the poverty of the community, especially when she walked into the existing medical clinic and found the cabinets bare of supplies. She witnessed the physical brokenness of the people when she saw young people with AIDS who looked like the elderly. But she also recognized the spiritual hunger and hopefulness in a 6-year-old, HIV-positive girl who came to Sandy and said, “If you believe in Jesus, and die, then you will live.”
 
Davis returned home with “my world exponentially expanded,” she said, and insisted that her husband accompany her on the next trip. He did and both now work together to do what they can on their mission trips to Africa.

Despite the hardships the people in Nigeria combat on a daily basis, they still have a hope and a joy in the saving grace of Christ that is indescribable, inspirational, contagious and a constant draw to Sandy and Morgan Davis.