2010 Speakers

Caesar Mwangi

He is the Managing Director at Sasini Tea Ltd, where he is in charge of overseeing the operations of this agribusiness which is primarily involved in the growing, processing and marketing of tea and coffee products. They have recently ventured on a small scale in the growing and marketing of dairy and horticultural products in Kenya

Eric Kigada

Eric Kigada is an Architectural Engineer and member of the both the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK) and the Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors of Kenya (BORAQS). He has worked in Kenya and Germany on various projects. He is currently working with Planning Systems Services Ltd on projects including new factories; real estate planning, high-rise buildings and a fibre optic landing station that will change the Nairobi landscape.

James Nyoro

James Nyoro is an agricultural economist with special passion on food security issues in Africa and Kenya in particular. James is the Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation, Africa office based in Nairobi, Kenya. He oversees the Rockefeller Foundation’s work across Africa, strengthening and complementing the foundation’s initiatives around the globe.

Jon Bøhmer

Jon is a serial entrepreneur who founded Scala one of the world’s biggest digital signage vendors. He has also founded other companies in technology space such as Snap TV and Pronto TV AS. Jon has been living in Kenya for the past 20 years and currently runs Kyoto Energy. Kyoto Energy focuses on developing renewable energy system development and manufacturing for developing countries. Its headquarters is in Thika, Kenya and in 2009 one of their products the Kyoto Box won the 2009 FT Climate Change Challenge. It was also featured on CNET.

Julie Gichuru

Julie Gichuru is a TV Host and Group Business Digital Manager at the fastest growing media house in East Africa; Royal Media Services. Julie is also responsible for spearheading RMS’s move towards establishing a global presence through the internet and raising revenue through digital platforms.Julie is the first African woman to receive the Martin Luther King Salute to Greatness Award for Advocacy of Active Non-Violence and Peace. She is a fellow of the African Leadership Initiative and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Laila Macharia

Laila holds a doctorate in law from Stanford University and has practised law in the US and Kenya. She is the Principal and Founder of Scion Real one the region’s leading real estate infrastructure and investment firm. Laila has extensive experience in urban development and corporate finance.

Njeri Wangari

Njeri is a multi talented Kenyan poet, performer, IT specialist and arts blogger. She has been running her blog for over 3 years now – a project that she initially started in order to publishing her poetry online. It has since grown to incorporate other forms of art as well as played host other poets.

Su Kahumbu-Stephanou

Su founded an organic farm in Tigoni, Kenya dedicated in serving local consumers. Her company, Green Dreams Ltd later went on to market and certify regional organic produce. She has also been involved in empowering small scale organic farmers through providing them with education and markets for their organic products. Her focus is on developing new marketing models for the farmers by challenging the current bias, business and trade regulations that favour big business locally and internationally.

Yvonne Owuor

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Kenya) plays in the worlds of creativity, heritage, technology, imagination and innovation. She works with interdisciplinary teams in the arts and has been a key facilitator of creative, innovation and knowledge economy conversations and events. She intends to expand the regional stake and play in the global knowledge economy through practical and multi-sectoral strategies. Yvonne was formerly the Executive Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival/Festival of the Dhow countries (2003-5) after which she joined the, then start-up, Aga Khan University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences planning project as Project Co-ordinator. At present, she works as Programme Specialist (Arts and Digital Media) working with concepts, models and facilitating spaces where proposals for higher education strategies in and proposals for creativity, arts, design, innovation, research in the arts and performative sciences that resonate with East Africa’s ambitions are explored. Yvonne is engaged with different conservation and cultural initiatives that co-opt cultural imagination and life, landscape memory, art, technology, story into futures. Better known as a creative writer who won the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story, Weight of Whispers, another of her stories, The Knife Grinder’s Tale, was made into a short film in 2005. She has had several pieces–fiction and non-fiction, published worldwide and is in the process of finishing her first novel, Dust and Memory.