200_mutombo-200x180

Dikembe Mutombo

Founder
Dikembe Mutombo Foundation
WORKING GROUP SESSION LEADER, The Future of Philanthopy, CSR and CRA

We are deeply honored to have my friend, and dedicated global community leader DK, or Dikembe Mutombo, to serve as a prominent Session Leader at the upcoming HOPE Global Financial Dignity Summit, 2012.

Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo (born June 25, 1966), commonly referred to as Dikembe Mutombo, is a retired Congolese American professional basketball player who last played for the Houston Rockets of the NBA. He was the oldest player in the NBA at the time of his final season.[2]

The 7 ft 2 in (2.18 m), 260-pound (120 kg; 19 st) center is commonly referred to as one of the greatest shot blockers and defensive players of all time, winning the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award four times.

On January 10, 2007, he surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the second most prolific shot blocker, in terms of career blocked shots, in NBA history, behind only Hakeem Olajuwon. He is a member of the Luba ethnic group and speaks EnglishFrenchSpanishPortugueseTshilubaSwahiliLingala and two other Central African varieties.[3] In the second game of the first round of the 2009 NBA playoffs, Mutombo suffered a knee injury that kept him out for the remainder of the postseason. Soon after the injury, Mutombo announced he had played his last games in the NBA.[4]

Dikembe Mutombo played for six NBA teams and is an accomplished businessman and philanthropist, with a history of living by example. 

In 1997, Mutombo with the Mutombo Foundation began plans to open a $29 million, 300-bed hospital on the outskirts of his hometown, the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. Ground was broken in 2001, and Mutombo personally donated $3.5 million toward the hospital's construction. 

On August 14, 2006, Dikembe donated $15 million to the completion of the hospital for its ceremonial opening on September 2, 2006. It was by then named Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, for his late mother, who died of a stroke in 1997.

When it opened in February 2007, the $29 million facility became the first modern medical facility to be built in that area in nearly 40 years. His hospital is on a 12-acre (49,000 m2) site on the outskirts of Kinshasa in Masina, where about a quarter of the city's 7.5 million residents live in poverty. It is minutes from Kinshasa's airport and near a bustling open-air market. The hospital has full telemedicine capabilities with the United States and Europe through the network established by Medical Missions for Children.

Read his complete credentials below.

Dikembe Mutombo | HOPE Global Financial Dignity Summit.

Pin It on Pinterest