Biographies for the Sinapis Annual Graduation and Business Plan Competition Judges

The following are the biographies for the judges who will be presiding over Sinapis Annual Graduation and Business Plan competition.

Sally Gitonga

Sally Gitonga is the Country Manager for Business Partners International Kenya Limited. Business Partners is a private equity firm that provides risk capital funding and mentoring/technical assistance support to Businesses (mainly SME’s) in the Kenyan market in amounts ranging between US$ 50,000 and US$ 1 million (ie. between Ksh 5 million – Ksh 100 million). Business Partners also currently has offices in South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Zambia and Namibia.

Ms. Gitonga has over 20 years’ experience in the financial services sector, both from the banking sector and the private equity industry. She is passionate about working with SME’s, having had the opportunity to work with this sector for most of her career, in the area of providing funding services. She was responsible for setting up the Business Partners – Kenya office in 2006 and has been instrumental in the growth of the Company in the country since then.

Ms. Gitonga has an MBA from USIU, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics & Sociology (Fist Class Honours) from Nairobi University.

She was recognised as one of the Top Women under 40 in Kenya in the year 2009.

Ms. Gitonga is very keen and passionate to see businesses grow and also engages in mentoring Entrepreneurs.

Read: Sinapis: Empowering Aspiring Entrepreneurs in the Developing World

Eva Muraya

(Brand Guru & Passionate Entrepreneur ͞Brand is the Business of Business)

Eva Muraya is CEO of Brand Strategy and Design Limited a regional integrated marketing communications consultancy firm that offers various services including brand audit and management, internal brand engagement and advertising, and public relations.

She holds over twenty years of diverse brand strategy development skill and experience. She was recently nominated by Women Inspiration and Enterprise Africa (WIE) as one of Africa’s Top 60 Most Influential Women. In 2008, she was a co-recipient of the inaugural Goldman Sachs Fortune Global Leadership Award.

She was also an award nominee at the Pan African Invent and Innovate Conference in Accra – Ghana in 2005, sponsored by the International Finance Corporation. Regionally, Color Creations Ltd was the only woman led top 10 finalist business out of 451 SME companies drawn from East and Central Africa in the 2007 Legatum Pioneers of Prosperity Business Award held in Rwanda and presided over by President Paul Kagame.

She was selected in 2006 by the US State Department to represent Kenya in a premier U.S. government-sponsored program dubbed the Fortune/State Department International Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. She serves on the Vital Voices African Board of Advisers. She also serves as the Chair of Zawadi Africa Educational Program, the Kenya Association of Women Business Owners (KAWBO), and the Board of the Nairobi Women’s Hospital and is a member of the Board of Advisors for USIU’s Chandaria School of Business.

Eva is a fellow of the fourth class of the Africa Leadership Initiative-East Africa and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She is a devoted mother to two beautiful girls Stephanie and Zawadi Muraya. She enjoys listening to different genres of music, believes that prayer is the answer to everything and plays a mean guitar.

Mark Kaigwa

Mark Kaigwa is an African entrepreneur, author and professional speaker. He is the Founder of Nendo, a Nairobi-based consultancy delivering solutions in research, training and  strategy across Sub-Saharan Africa. He is the publisher and co-author of respected digital trends & insights annual, The Nendo Social Media Trend Report.

As an author, he is a contributing author in books such as Doing Ideas, ON! The Future of Now (with Seth Godin, Jonah Perreti et al.), Africa & China: How Africans and their Governments are Shaping Relations with China and most recently Digital Kenya – An Entrepreneurial Revolution in the Making the country’s first management book set for release in August 2016.

As a speaker he’s built up a repertoire speaking to a combined audience of tens of thousands in over 35 countries to date. Kaigwa has found acclaim in sharing stories on the reframing of Africa’s narrative thanks to technology, connectivity & the impact of the continent’s youth population. Mark Kaigwa was feted among Forbes Africa’s inaugural 30 under 30 Best Young Entrepreneurs in Africa in 2013.

Mark has been featured on BBC, CNN, El Paìs, Deutsche Welle, CCTV, Al Jazeera and The Guardian not to mention publications such as Fast Company, WIRED, The Atlantic among others.

Duncan Onyango

Duncan Onyango is Director of East Africa for Acumen Fund Inc., a non-profit global venture fund that invests in companies, leaders and ideas to change the way the world tackles poverty.

Onyango oversees Acumen’s portfolio of companies working in agriculture, energy, education, health care, housing and water and sanitation. Since 2007, Acumen has invested more than $40 million in social enterprises across East Africa. Prior to Acumen, Onyango served as the Group Chief Finance Officer of Rift Valley Railways, where he led the structuring of a $287M debt and equity capital investment in the rail sector.

He began his career with over ten years at Abbey National, a major international bank in London, gaining cross-functional business experience in both the retail and corporate arms of Abbey, including serving as the bank’s Head of Training & Management Development for the Wealth Management Division.

Building on that experience, Onyango moved into consulting at Strategic Workforce Limited in London, before returning to East Africa where he founded Quantum Africa in 2006, working with many small businesses and entrepreneurs. He has expertise in strategic & business planning, organizational alignment and business transformation. Onyango holds an honours degree in Computing and Retail Management from Oxford University.