Founder and CEO, ZanaAfrica

For nearly 10 years, Megan has been empowering marginalized groups in Kenya. A graduate of Harvard University, she brings extensive experience in social enterprise, planning and fundraising for non-profits, and development and strategy for businesses. A "next practices" thinker, she not only wants to incorporate best practices into her work, but to find the holes and do things differently to find sometimes more lasting solutions.

Megan first went to Kenya in 1998 to volunteer with street girls through Homeless Children International Kenya (HCI-Kenya) while attending college. In 2001, Megan returned to Kenya to serve as a Resource Mobilization Manager and was charged with developing long-term strategies and exploring self-sustainability opportunities for HCI-Kenya.

In her five years at HCI-Kenya, Megan strengthened her department and grew it to a team of seven people, which oversaw its first strategic plan. She raised $1 million in private donations for local Kenyan programs and businesses, and managed several rural infrastructure projects, including the purchase of land and the construction of two dormitories, a dining hall, a deep well, and a primary school. Her department also oversaw child sponsorship, youth leadership, and volunteering, drawing over 150 local and international professionals annually.

Megan also managed the self-sustainability arm of HCI-Kenya and its five businesses. These five sustainable businesses included a bridal gown rental boutique located in Nairobi called The Sterling Bride, a water business begun in 2004, a guesthouse established in 2005, and a local bakery launched in late 2006. Internship opportunities at these businesses were created for the youth to learn practical and entrepreneurial skills, and a foster care program was established to place children into stable homes over the holidays. Megan herself served as a foster mother to two teenage girl students of HCI-Kenya for nearly a year, one of whom is now a Junior Field Officer with ZanaA and part-time in University studying business management.

While she was founding ZanaAfrica, Megan also worked as a grassroots consultant to communities in Northern Kenya through Northern Rangelands Trust and the Globe Foundation, facilitating strategic plans at the local level for Community Wildlife Conservancies, identifying business opportunities for communities to develop in ways that preserve the best of their culture, and bringing students from Kenya and Purdue University into academic studies of practical and pressing problems.

Board affiliations currently include: the Rotary Club of Nairobi-South (Past President 06-07); the Council of Alumni for Social Enterprise (CASE), an association of Harvard alumni and students committed to social enterprise (Undergraduate Advisory Chair); Sojourners, a non-profit Kenyan film company; and Milele Family Homes, a non-profit helping to address the challenges of AIDS orphans in unconventiona ways.

Megan is a member of the Tae Kwan Do Association of Kenya, and Mavuno Church. She is a Warden for the U.S. Embassy and is proficient in Swahili and French.

Dr. Mwangi's bio will be posted shortly.

Ranja is a co-proprietor of Ranja & Company Advocates, which he founded in 2007. They focus on providing high quality commercial legal services to young entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises. An advocate of the High Court since 2004, Ranja obtained his diploma in legal practice from Kenya School of Law prior to graduating with honors from the University of Nairobi with a bachelors in laws (LLB). Concurrently, Ranja is a lead consultant at Fanaka Consulting, and on the boards of several companies and non-profits.

In 2002 Ranja was the Top 200 Finalist of the International Students Committee Wings of Excellence Award, St. Gallen, Switzerland

Ranja says the following about working with ZanaA:

I also look forward to developing my knowledge of the Education Sector both at policy and at the grassroots implementation level, while participating in an activity that will make a difference and deal with one of the many challenges of educating Kenyans.

As a person who is passionate about leadership and development in Kenya, the MakaPads concept is a very exciting undertaking for several reasons i.e. :-

•  It is designed to avoid long term donor dependence.
•  Utilizing local human resource.
•  Developing local technology improvement.
•  Breaking the corporate strangle hold which tends to serve the elite and alienate the poor.
•  Raising access of girl child to education with potentially revolutionary impact on the country’s economy.

Kenya and indeed the rest of the continent will only rid itself of poverty by developing local sustainable solutions to the very basic problem areas of food, water, health, education, sanitation and waste management. Only then can we begin to participate in the global economy. This project is a step in the right direction.

Wamaitha Mungai has been at Standard Chartered bank for over four and a half years, and is currently the Head of Deposits and Transaction Products. Her key responsibilities are in strategic planning, research and market execution for wealth management in both the mass market and high net worth segments through relevant marketing, acquisition and retention strategies and techniques. Prior to this she was the Manager of Service Quality and Head of Consumer Banking Service Excellence.

Before Standard Chartered, Wamaitha’s leadership was also recognized and she moved quickly up the ranks at InCA Communications, from Client Service Executive to Head of Marketing and Client Services, to Manager of Service Excellence. She managed key accounts, oversaw monthly account planning and communications, established and maintained strategic alliances to aid in value creation and brand presence enhancement, and created an affective communications and sales strategy. She oversaw market research and the creation of promotional materials for the sales team.

Wamaitha has a BA from the University of Nairobi and is currently obtaining her MSC in Strategic Planning from the Edinburgh Business School, Heriot Wat University.

During a year in the Leadership Development Program of Mavuno Church, she spent six months mentoring girls transitioning into University, counseling them on managing finances, relationships and career choices. Wamaitha also spent time in Rwanda building 3-bedroom houses for widows from the genocide who were receiving vocational training and were each adopting 10 orphans. These experiences have increased her desire to merge the worlds of multi-national corporations and grass-roots initiatives to positively impact on the community and the African continent and its future.

Wamaitha brings important skills to ZanaA, including strategic planning and project execution, marketing and events planning, and financial forecasting.

Mwendwa Mbugua currently works with Kijiji Records, as the Strategy & Marketing Director. Kijiji Records is one of the leading studios and music agencies, in East Africa. Mwendwa has nine years experience in marketing with special emphasis on communication strategy, brand management and advertising. Prior to working at Kijiji, Mwendwa served as a Strategic Planner for Instant Grass East Africa - a youth insight generation and market research firm.

She holds a post graduate diploma from AAA School of Advertising, South Africa and an undergraduate degree in Communication from Daystar University, Kenya.

Mwendwa is married to Kanjii Mbugua, a leading Gospel musician, and they have one daughter - Selah.

For Mwendwa, ZanaA is a wonderful opportunity to elevate the status of young girls in her nation; giving them a chance at education, an education that will allow them to break free from their situation and get that much closer to realising their dreams.

Communications, Partnership and Participation Section of UNICEF Kenya
ZanaA Advisory Board Team Leader, Fundraising

Julie Mwabe has done a lot in only 24 years, and is currently volunteering with ZanaA full time as she prepares for her next adventure. For the last three years she has been in the Communication, Partnership and Participation Section of UNICEF Kenya, where her primary role was to identify individuals and communities with personal development and human interest stories that needed to be told, and working together with local and international journalists to bring them into the news while fulfilling UNICEF’s mandate in the region: to help women and children access quality healthcare, education, equality and protection. This has also included those infected and affected by HIV and AIDS.

As such, Julie has been exposed to the vast issues women and children face, from malnutrion to female circumcision, across Kenya. This has made Julie passionate about finding simple and affordable solutions for marginalised communities in Africa. She believes that because she has seen, she is therefore responsible to be part of the solution because "Faith without deed is dead". She says, “Once you see the faces of these children starving or girls who are discriminated against because they are menstruating- there is no way I can just sit and do nothing about it. Something has to be done....and it starts with me.”

Julie prefers to remain behind the scene by assisting with fundraising strategies for ZanaAfrica and was the first member of the Kenya Advisory Board, spearheading the Fundraising Team. She subsequently  joined the Board of Directors. 

Julie has a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Psychology from the University of Otago in New Zealand and has now embarked in September for a Masters in International Journalism with a focus in documentary film making at Cardiff University in Wales. As such, she is our ambassador in the UK.