Orry Okolloh
Currently Google Policy Manager for Africa, Okollo holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh and a graduate degree in Law from Harvard Law School in 2005. In 2006, she co-founded Mzalendo.com, a civic education portal focused on the Kenyan Parliament and offering details about MPs, such as debate contributions and attendance history, keeping a record of motions made on parliamentary bills, and making the bills themselves available.
Okolloh is also a co-founder of Ushahidi and was its executive director until December 2010. Ushahidi is a website for citizen journalists to report incidents of both violence and peace efforts via internet, mobile email, SMS and Twitter; it’s the hugest crowd sourcing site in Africa currently.
Isis Nyong’o
Isis is the immediate former Vice President and Managing Director of the African operations of InMobi, the world’s largest independent mobile advertising network.
Nyong’o has degrees from Stanford and Harvard and has previously worked in senior management positions at MTV, Google and InMobi Africa. She was also selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. By the way, have you been invited to her wedding to Chris Madison?
Juliana Rotich
Rotich is co-founder and executive director of crowd-sourcing site Ushahidi, and iHub,a tech business incubator. Rotich holds an IT degree from the University of Missouri.
Ushahidi allows users to source information about crisis areas, collating it into live, online maps. It was first used during the post-election violence in Kenya in 2007-8, allowing the media to cover the violence effectively and put pressure on it to stop. It has since been adapted for disaster situations in Congo, Haiti and Chile.
Currently she’s involved in Energy and environment conservation research.
Judith Owigar
Co-founder and president of Akirachix, which seeks to promote the role of women within the African tech sector. The Akirachix network brings together women with an interest in technology for networking and training, also working with tech professionals and students. It runs training programmes for girls in poor urban areas of Nairobi. Owigar is a coder, blogger and tech enthusiast who believes that technology can be used to make Africa richer and more transparent.
Jessica Colaço
Jessica Colaço is the research lead at iHub Research, a TED Global Fellow 2009 and a Mobile and Robotics Technology Evangelist, founder of Mobile Boot Camp Kenya, Co-founder of AkiraChix, Co-Founder of WMIAfrica, TEDGlobal Fellow 2009 and a Bass guitarist in Nairobi, Kenya.
She was named one of the top 40 women less than 40 years in Kenya’s business scene by Business Daily in 2009 and 2011 and 2012. She has been featured by CNN Labs, Wired UK and other mainstream media for her work in technology and innovation.
