The recent painful passing of our #WakandaForever really got me thinking of how many younger heroes we have amongst us that will never make it to the “Box Office” or our Television screens like our late charming Chadwick Boseman was blessed to do….and even more saddening how many of them go about doing what their heavenly maker has called them to do on earth and yet they will go unnoticed for years to come. Let me even shock you further, can i? Many of these young heroes and heroines are my fellow Kenyans who have won several huge accolades internationally but back home nobody knows about them let alone even know their names. Chadwick’s passing actually reminded me as an author that there has got be a better way of me celebrating our very own in my awesome “fearless guide” book which in hope to captivate and inspire many more unsung heroes to reach their God given greatness! In this chapter i therefore I wish to unveil just a few of our very own very young unsung heroes some of whom I am so privileged to have mentored in one way or another and others I was able to interview all over our beautiful country of Kenya. By now many of you by now know that I am a fearless Diversity and Inclusion Champion. I was not only thrilled by how young these innovators are but I was also very intentional when I interviewed these heroes because I really wanted to have a fair diverse representation of our unsung heroes who hail from different counties, parts of our country because when God created us, he for sure intended that no one should be left behind… and so that’s my main objective here! We indeed are all important and precious before our almighty God, our all-loving maker who has never discriminated against!

As you read through these phenomenal unsung heroes’ stories, may you be challenged to ask yourself – “at their young age of 20 years what impact were you making in this world?”  Better yet since all is not lost, may these young heroes accelerate your steps towards a more meaningful, self-less impactful life which is less about looking after your own selfish interests but more about impacting others’ lifes! If we all do exactly that the world will have no choice than become a better world for us to happily coexist ever after.

One last point to note about the unsung heroes of our times that I wish to unveil below is that they have one common characteristic amongst them. And if you have read this far you too are one of my undiscovered unsung hero in your own right, won’t you agree? Or perhaps you are in the process of becoming a “fearless influencer” in your space which is my humble desire and prayer? But allow me to tell you about the unsung heroes I am about to unveil to you in a few minutes. These are very ordinary people who are just like you and me but who are particularly very passionate about bringing change in the communities they live in…and despite the tremendous adversity they all face they have seized the moment, overcome all their odds and have purposed to indeed “be the change they want to see” in their communities by solving a particular problem that they found to be a thorn in the fresh of their society and by so doing they transformed real lifes.

1.Young Leroy Mwasaru, Greenpact: This young student at 17 years of age discovered “gold” in what many of us commonly refer to as “poop” to fuel his high school. As a high school student of Maseno School, Young Leroy started Greenpact when his school faced a major challenge of a faulty sewer system. For my global readers let me break it down to you! In rural Kenya, pit latrines are the majority types of toilets used in the rural areas in Kenya aka basically these are dug holes in the ground that act as toilets –which have no water for flushing mechanisms. And for sure I can tell you for free they don’t always work well, and needless to mention that they every so often unleash one heck of a very nasty smell worse than that of a dead rat. At Leroy’s large boarding school known as Maseno School, located in Western Kenya, their pit hole sewer system often backed up, overflew and thoroughly contaminated a nearby drinking water stream for their “unsuspecting” neighboring community, sparking a demonstration against Leroy’s high school as this was a very unethical and a huge health hazard to the surrounding community. Am sure many of us who grew up in Kenya can attest that a stinking sewer is not a pleasant site but the challenge is that many of us faced with a similar challenge would simply leave such a menace to be solve by the sewer experts or would simply sadly quickly walk away and this is why I choose to celebrate one young Mr Leroy Mwasaru who is a force to reckon with because unlike many of us he choose to not settle for less but instead he took this menace as his personal challenge and sought to look for a solution to solve it once and for all. Young Leroy mobilized his classmates and together they created a human waste bioreactor that utilized both human and organic waste to produce Biogas and Organic fertilizer. Their thinking was simple as Leroy narrated to me “why not turn the sewage, along with food waste and dung from the school’s cattle waste into generating power for our entire school?” And true to his word! Leroy’s prototype currently powers their school and this seemingly crazy unorthodox idea won them the first prize for invention through Innovate Kenya (an idea competition amongst high school students). Upon graduating, Leroy set up Greenpact in 2015 as a Limited Liability company– which embraces the circular economy–using waste to generate Biogas (clean energy) and organic Fertilizer using waste as a resource to strengthen local communities through social, eco-friendly and economic empowerment. Now let’s stop and allow me to ask you dear friends? At Leroy’s age of 17 what problems had you helped to solve and what value had you added to your world or to those around you? What achievement had you and I accomplished when were we were 20 years old, besides perhaps acquiring a high school graduation and being notoriously famous for harassing our parents demanding extra pocket money allowances which at that age we felt super entitled to? If a teenager student at the high school can become a fearless influencer of our society what’s our excuse folks? Greenpact Limited embraces the circular economy–which involves using waste to generate Biogas (clean energy) and organic Fertilizer using waste as a raw material resource. Through a human waste bioreactor toilet that’s able to separate both solid and liquid waste to harness Biogas and fertilizer. Young Leroy and his team offer both a service (monthly maintenance) and a product (their Bioreactor systems) to Kenyan consumers by using an approach that solves economies of scale for institutions using their systems. Fast forward to today, Leroy’s company now aims at being the ultimate provider of renewable energy in East Africa- with a long term vision of “solving Kenya’s renewable crisis one bio-digester at a time”. His ambitious vision has inspired birth of a few other companies that young Leroy, a serial entrepreneur leads, Greenpact wants to amplify the socio-economic empowerment of many other Youths as well as solve the skyrocketing unemployment menace in the African continent.

              They say no pain no gain, by 2018 when he was only 20 years of age, his story and his vital work has seen his work published in many high places globally from Tony Elumelu Foundation(TEF), CNN, The HuffPost, Forbes Magazine, Grist, Nairobi News to Forbes30Under30. _{https://nairobinews.nation.co.ke/news/young-kenyan-biogas-millionaire-ranked-in-forbes-30-under-30.} Greenpact has garnered many global awards such as the YE finalist award, INDEX finalist award, winner of the Harvard Social Innovation Collaborative and winner of the Resolution Fellowship and multiple media recognitions on Forbes List, twice by CNN, HuffPost, CCTV America, MakeShift, UpWorthy, Fast Company and Grist. Today, Leroy is “One Young World Ambassador”, a Royal Commonwealth Society Fellow and Collectively Ambassador. I must personally thank “One Young World Ambassador” who were so gracious to officially introduce me and connect me to young Leroy through our Banking partners at International Trade Centre(ITC)- under Youth and Trade Initiative. Thankfully his company is at post revenue stage currently.  Mind you apart from lack of affordable renewable energy, Greenpact is solving sanitation issues for local communities especially in our densely populated informal settlements that grapple with poor sewage and drainage systems. Did you know that ill health and lost productivity costs the Kenya Water and Sanitation programs an estimated $ USD 324,000–0.9% of Kenya’s national Gross Domestic Product(GDP) accordingly to Ministry of environment research. Greenpact’s unique product offering (Bio-digesters) will help solve this problem. Through his Greenpact impact, Leroy has had several transformative experiences including sharing about the work of Greenpact in coastal and western regions in Kenya and sharing at international entrepreneurship conferences such as United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Like this innovation and all the wards winning was not enough, this brilliant unstoppable young innovator Leroy has recently been inspired to increase his eco-friendly impact footprint in his community leading him to start “CampBuni” (a social enterprise that teaches high school aged children human centered design thinking and entrepreneurship). This is so awesome and despite the challenges he faces as a young entrepreneur such as team management, vision articulation, raising capital, hiring and dilemmas in addressing our competing customers’ needs, through continued mentoring and coaching, being courageous when others are fearful, embracing teamwork, willingness to learn daily and fail forward-he continues to have passionate zeal of Juliani’s “exponential potential” and many possibilities of him touching many lifes in renewable energy sector (biogas). I love what Leroy shared with me and this is how I know that this young unsung hero is a fearless influencer, he said to me on the phone, “Teamwork has been one of our greatest strength at Greenpact. Sometimes you inspire the team to a point all you have to do is get out of the way and offer your leadership.” Leroy shared how before COVID19 pandemic hit, Leroy and his team planned to do a drive across the East Africa region to encourage the adoption of renewable energy like Rwanda and Uganda and as well as double Greenpact’s service delivery capacity to serve even larger markets-helping them explore other forms of renewable energy like solar. 

2.Ifrah Arab:22 year old, Supermom in Garissa, Kenya Besides coming up with such an awesome name “supermoms”, Ifrah is another of our very own Young unsung heroine that I wish to tell you all about. Like I mentioned up there I was introduced to her by our trading partners at Geneva during one of our “International Youth Day 2020” brainstorming virtual sessions during this pandemic. I must personally thank “One Young World Ambassador” who were so gracious to officially introduce me and connect me to young Ifrah and Leroy at International Trade Centre(ITC)- under our joint Youth and Trade Initiative. I was super excited about their email introduction because nothing excites me as a human being more than to see my fellow young Kenyans thrive and shine globally. But on the same breadth I was a bit sad that such a sweet impactful young lady is able to be celebrated internationally yet I personally had never met her nor heard about her work being celebrated here in Kenya …which obviously explains why I did not know her then…which is a somewhat accurate indication that many more Kenyans do not know that such a heroine exists and neither do we get to celebrate such brilliantly gifted innovators locally. I intentionally digress and I know this is a very valid timely heated debate and a story of another day, but this is a narrative that i am intentional and wish to change hence even why I am writing a book in the first place! Kenyans must learn to start celebrating our very own heros and heroines while they are still alive and kicking…not after they are far long gone…like the way we always “shamelessly” often celebrate the late Wangare Mathaai and many of our Kenyan freedom fighters long after they are now gone…yet we had many golden opportunities to celebrate them while they were still alive!! Ifrah grew up in Garissa town, which is a very a conservative dominated by a large muslim population where majority of women were never encouraged to have economic empowerment nor financial independence. Garissa town is located in the NorthEastern Province of Kenya which is quite dry and statistics show that 64% of women in her region are mostly unemployed as there are very limited employment opportunities there. The culture there also does not quite promote girl -hild education so many of these girls are quickly married off at a very early age. Despite Ifrah facing a lot of challenges such as initially some of these older women and their men seeing her initiative as a serious breach of culture, she overcame these challenges by using a new tactic. Talk about being fearless, Ifrah strategically decided to first approach her community elders, religious leaders, and even local women groups. She had a physical candid dialogue with them and she explained to them what her mission was and made them understand the positive impact her initiative would have on the community as whole. This made it easier for her elders which helped her penetrate her larger community who are now not only love but trust her initiative. Her people now are even endorsing her and she personally interacts with the women in her “Supermoms” network.

In 2015, when her mother passed away it was a sobering turning point for her, Ifrah felt the need to uplift mothers in her own community. Ifrah took this problem head-on as her own personal challenge which she must find a solution to solve. And at only 22 years old, but she is currently on a passionate unstoppable mission to alleviate poverty, economically empower and inspire more women who are even much older than her. She founded ‘SuperMom” enterprise, a door-to- door reliable “last-mile” distribution network that gives Kenyan women in her disadvantaged areas access to quality and essential consumer products. Within her first two years of operation, she now has over 50 women now selling products door to door earning an income and making fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies –which are essential household items accessible to thousands. Before her innovation Ifrah narrated to me on the phone “I noticed that these women would walk hundreds of miles to buy these essential goods for their families which was “slavery at best” because they would spend hours back and forth.” She is therefore solving the last-mile distribution problem by empowering and enabling unemployed, uneducated and underemployed women in marginalized communities to improve their livelihoods. These empowered women who Ifrah trains and become “supermoms” sell a whole range of basic everyday consumer goods such as sugar, salt, flour, clean green energy, sanitary products and health products. Ifrah hopes to draw in 2,000 women in the next two years and double their household incomes. Ifrah’s work has seen her story published in many global publications such as SheLeadsAfrica and CNBC. Ifrah was a 2016 Anzisha Prize Finalist, where she won an exciting reward, which encouraged her to keep impacting women, she learnt a lot especially because she got a rare opportunity to meet different young problem solvers from all over Africa aged between 15 to 22 years old who shared the same vision she has of “making Africa great for future generations to come”. She says “it was so wonderful and inspiring for me to meet and build networks with people of the same mindset and share ideas with them.” Ifrah passionately shared a very sobering fact with me which sadly many of us leaders in the urban settings might be overlooking, “Margaret can I shock you that the problem we SuperMoms are trying to solve is not unique to my community in Garissa? Several other marginalized communities in Kenya face the same exact problem. My vision is to expand and reach these other communities. The demand is there because Supermoms are currently not even covering all the basic consumer goods needed by my local community. Every time I hear any of the women talking about how SuperMom has improved her life it motivates me to do more.” Ifrah hopes to forge more partnerships so as to increase the number of FMCG products in their Supermoms distribution catalogue, and am personally so happy that I am currently working with her to help her forge serious collaborations to a few FMCG multinationals in my networks -the likes of BIDCO Africa and CocaCola Bottlers amongst many others. You can listen to Ifrah’s passionate interview on CNBC Africa here. https://www.cnbcafrica.com/east-africa/2020/03/13/how-supermom-is-creating-employment-and-opportunities-for-kenyan-women/

3.Elizabeth Achieng, 28, Innovation: Vertical Gardens The amazing thing about this next unsung hero is that as much as COVID19 pandemic brought about unprecedented challenges that impacted many of our lifes negatively, she continued to develop innovative solutions adapting quickly to enrich their solutions to meet the new demands that the pandemic has brought about. When the pandemic hit so many people all over the world were left jobless and in our Kenyan economy it was worse because it meant that many households could not afford to put decent healthy nutritious meals on their table anymore and especially in the urban cities where “junk foods” consumption has taken over…and often times the source of the food we consume cannot be traced leading to harmful contaminants in what we eat.  Noticing this food quality and poor quality challenge, Elizabeth courageously decided to explore the idea of Vertical gardens that come in different designs and shapes which can be installed in different places such as balcony, roof tops and backyards of urban houses who often have very limited spaces mostly in apartment/flats. COVID 19 has taught many Kenyans to turn into homegrown indigenous food groups, and this was a blessing in disguise for Ms Achieng because it has offered her a viable business opportunity where she has guided over 500 people(customers) to transform their open spaces to organic gardens while still making a decent living that is giving her a monthly income. We salute you!

4.Jackline Muthuri, 30, Innovation: Handwashing Bay: I was impressed by what Jackline shared with us, “When the first case of Covid-19 was detected and crazy measures to control the spread of the virus announced, I knew that my salon business would take a mighty blow. I am a hairdresser with a hair dressing and beauty diploma certificate to show for it. As the number of new positive cases increased, the number of clients visiting the salon decreased significantly. I had to evolve or find another source of income. I chose the latter. I closed the salon and started selling second hand clothes. While at the market, I saw how the public was struggling to fight the virus by regularly washing their hands. But what struck me more was a clip I came across that showed a woman opening the lid of a bucket full of water, washing her hands, closing it and leaving the remaining water for others to use. She thought she was practicing proper hygiene.  thought to myself, what if I came up with an effective hand washing bay? But I wasn’t good at DIY (do it yourself) projects. I tried converting a water storage tank into a hand washing station but failed. I decided to try again, this time with the help of a plumber.”  Talk about being fearless and not giving up! As we speak Jackline finally innovated a hand washing bay that has an inlet, an outlet and a sink. The water flows in from the source and out to the septic tank. It can be used in open markets, hospitals, schools, churches, hotels, kiosks and even homes. With this device, users don’t need to keep pouring out the dirty water since the outlet is connected to a septic tank. This bold innovation has become Jackline’s new and main source of income and she is now doing it on full-time basis. She says how she also learnt to make puff seats. Of course like all the other the young start- ups, the entrepreneurial journey has not been very smooth especially because this was my first time getting involved in such a daring project. Her biggest challenge so far she says is the scarcity of raw materials, and inadequate capital to scale up her project. However, she is very hopeful that things will continue to look up as she gets more inquiries and referrals to potential customers. Jackline, we salute you our hygiene –COVID-19 solution innovator and I hope that some of our readers here will become your final consumers! I am very passionate about promoting our own locally made solutions as a #BuyKenyaBuildKenya goodwill ambassador!

5.Brian Nyagol, Brainverse Technologies- Homabay County, Kenya: Now dear reader, I don’t about you but in my 2^nd year in Kenyatta University, i was as “green” as they come and i had just started getting used to my exciting wild campus life? Uuuuummmh… it reminds me how many secret male -admirers I am told I had because for sure I was such an innocent obedient sharp “economics & mathematics major” student! How about you guys-do you mind sharing your equally wild campus experiences? But this was not the case for one Brian Nyagol! During his second year of college, he started his own business, Brainverse Technologies. Mr Nyagol is an Electrical Engineer by profession and Software Engineer by passion and in practice. He spends the day building Davis & Shirtliff’s Internet of Things (IoT) & Digital Manufacturing Solutions where he is employed full time, and sacrifices his early mornings and his late evenings running Brainverse Technologies. This idea was driven by his curiosity and his crazy passion in technology due to its ability to solve real -life problems. Funny enough he studied electrical and electronics engineering and graduated with a degree from Moi University. And guess what? As we speak his company currently has 17 young individuals solving the forever rising menace of unemployment challenge at his age. And all his employees work virtually remotely for the last four years. Wow so basically when the rest of the world was struggling in March 2020 to migrate quickly into working remotely from home post COVID-19, Brian’s “future of work” and his staff literally had “arrived” 4 years ago. He says since all his staff work from home, coordination and project management is crucial for his business. His company builds products and services that help small businesses grow their digital footprint and build internal operational strengths through apps, websites, systems, and business branding services. When Coronavirus hit Kenya, Brian shared with me on the phone, ‘I quickly realized that almost every Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)- normal office operations had been disrupted and their employees had to work from home due to the lockdowns. This was the turning point for his innovation because these MSMEs needed our products and services to effectively manage their businesses, to manage their staff, customers and documents virtually. Otherwise without the requisite infrastructure and knowledge, it would be impossible if not quite difficult to run their business remotely, and this is exactly what our innovative solution dubbed “Startup Suite” was built to exactly do. Our solution helps workers in any field easily transition from the traditional office to remote working by digitizing their processes from staff management, customer management and projects and operations management. We even recently launched a special package for freelancers too.” Even though Brian’s young innovation still needs financial support, technical infrastructure and human capital to scale up, his brilliant innovation recently received a Konza Technopolies Award for best innovation in a nationwide innovation challenge dubbed “The Great Covid-19 Innovation Challenge.” Brian started in the Nyanza Region and he aims to impact 500 businesses in Homabay, Siaya, Kisumu, Migori and Kisii Counties in the next three months by conducting trainings on creating and managing work-from-home teams, and using digital technologies to market and brand their businesses. We indeed celebrate this Young Unsung Kenyan hero aka “Kenya SteveJobs” and I hope some of you MSMEs reading this article will contact Brian’s team and buy this amazing digital office solution as your company cannot afford to be left behind.        

6.Peter Mbiria Maina, 29, Project: Automatic Resuscitator: Growing up in a small village in Kenya, you can be sure we had limited resources and toys were a luxury which we saw in other kids’ houses and our rich cousins’ houses during school vacations. This was different for one Mbiria Maina who says “if I tell my childhood stories, the toys I made for myself took center-stage which obviously shows how much I enjoyed creating, innovating and improvising things even as a young child. While in Form Four in 2009, I joined the Science Congress and competed all the way to the national level with my invention of a self-defense teaser that used a modified camera flashing unit.” Indeed, when Covid-19’s first case was announced in Kenya, many of us were scared to near death, but Mbiria saw it as a rare golden innovation opportunity and he kept thinking of what he could do to make things better by creating solutions that could solve Kenya’s medical sector challenges which continues to grapple with lack of latest technologically driven –right medical equipment. As Peter was doing his research, he found out that ventilators were critical in handling emergency cases related to COVID-19. He shared how his friends shared links to articles containing useful information and one Anthony Muthungu, the founder of TotoSci, called him asking if they could collaborate to create a ventilator. Mbiria was obviously very excited, so zealous and committed to the idea that it took them about 16 days to come up with the final product prototype. The ventilator, which is actually an automatic resuscitator, is compact, and can either use electricity or a 12V battery. Their goal was to create an automatic resuscitator that could be used in ambulances when transferring patients who can’t breathe on their own, at homes for those who need breathing support and in intensive care units of hospitals in the event that all the available ventilators are occupied. The automatic resuscitator has a display and two knobs that allow doctors to set the number of breaths per minute as well as control the amount of air that is to be availed to the patient. So far, they have filed a patent for the ventilator, and they are collecting feedback as they continue to fine-tune their prototype…as well waiting approvals by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS). Mbiria still earns a living from his previous local inventions. Not so long ago Mbiria was even invited to attend an engineering symposium at Oxford University, and went to the UK for two weeks to learn about innovation and business and he made a presentation to the Duke of York, Prince Andrew and other guests at the Buckingham Palace in 2017. How cool is that for our very own Kenyan hero at only 29 years of age? Imagine what the future holds for these unsung heroes and heroines that I have highlighted and so many others that we are yet to discover?  I hope these few stories have motivated you enough to truly see what my is book is all about…and confirmed to you that indeed you too have the “exponential potential” to become a fearless influencer of our society that God intended you to become by making a difference starting today, purpose to “die empty”!!

Call to Action: And speaking of “die empty” by “awakening the leadership Genius in you” of spreading, giving the world every atom of goodness inside of us… the death of Chadwick Boseman has come to a rude painful shocker to many of us globally and some of us are still in strange denial of how much Cancer sucks. Truth be told there were many other madly gifted actors before “Wakanda Forever” but Chadwick carried some phenomenal magic and only him possessed that super power in a life time (of course after his mentor and his colleges fees “secret” sponsor Denzel Washington who is ageing gracefully). Regardless of his many struggles including lacking school fees at some point to him wanting to “fire himself” from a stereotypical actor which he did so well in an acting role that conflicted with his personal values and beliefs as Black American male. But did “Wakanda” do? When he got his next break to do what God had specially deposited in him as a special acting gift, he did extremely well and like many have said “Wakanda gave it his all withholding nothing back!” This is the exact reason why Black Panther became such a global a phenomenon and it’s not because it was ordinary Hollywood comic blockbuster…but because beneath the surface Ryan Coogler, the 31 years old who was at the helm of this movie project had a purpose greater than your usual movie producers …i remember listening to Ryan Coogler in an interview and him explaining “a complex tale of “Afrofuturism”, responsibility to the vulnerable, questions of liberation, and the role of women. I took the helm of the project, made artistic decisions that make this film worth discussing far beyond typical comic book geekdom. The story is located in Wakanda, a beautiful technologically advanced nation in Africa, which has the largest deposits of the world’s most precious metal on Earth, vibrainum. This context makes Wakanda the world’s most advanced civilization and the wealthiest nation in the Marvel Universe. With costume designer Ruth E. Carter and production designer, Hannah Beachler, we covered the cast — including Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Angela Bassett, Letitia Wright, and Daniel Kaluuya — in the fabric of Africa. Through the Amhara people of Ethiopia, the Akan of West Africa, the Maasai of Eastern Africa, and the Xhosa of South Africa, we gave a stylistic feast of the Pan-African fashion aesthetic: beautiful, vibrant colors; natural hair; and stories within stories on the fabric of the characters. The world of Wakanda, though fictional, opens up the viewer’s imagination –something that has never happened in African history. We all witness people of African descent not through the lens of “usual suffering”, but as complex characters who are seeking answers to universal questions, including: What is the moral responsibility of a community to those who suffer? What are the tools required to lead in an age of isolation and xenophobia?” As much as it is hard to accept that Chadwick Boseman is now gone at such a prime age, he was truly a real-life superhero.  Even more shocking is that Chadwick had been battling cancer for a while yet he managed to thoroughly entertain us and our kids in the big screen. When his death was first announced, his director and his cast members lamented how he had chemotherapy and few surgeries in between his acting roles…yet he gracefully with a to “die-for-charming-smile” had managed to bring us grace, poise, commanding presence where he didn’t have to raise his voice in all his roles. How can such a young black man super gifted by God going through all that pain chemo-medical treatment -still do what he did best to entertain us without complaining and with such a charming smile. Rest in Peace WakandaForever and if any of us ever doubted the powerful reason of why we must all pursue our God given purpose on earth fearless like Wakanda showed us how to because for sure our time is so limited on earth…let’s purpose to do it now…or else we stand to waste all the knowledge, all our creativity, our ideas and talents that only we carry inside of us. If you have a goal achieve it, if you have a brilliant idea execute it now…and this includes love…share your unconditional love with people who matter most to you especially your family. Share your humanity, your kindness by simply being human…instead of just keeping it all inside of yourself…where it adds zero value to no one nor does it make any difference when you it’s only inside of you. Let’s spread the love by pursuing our God given purpose on earth by letting out every atom of our greatness out for the world to make it a better place for you and me. Just like everyone’s sweetheart our Wakanda Forever, none of us know the hour nor the minute when our heavenly maker is ready to call us back to paradise so let’s do it now as a matter of urgency starting now!

 Being the first child in my family of 8 to dare leave the country into the Diaspora to not only further my education; (which I hold dearly to date) but in pursuit of a better life exposure with greener pastures, I knew that no matter what it took I had to do whatever it was that I had to do to be successful abroad! I mentioned previously that I grew up in some poor village settings but loaded with serenity galore in the slopes of rural Kenya called Gatanga famous for lash green tall indigenous trees green all year with abundance of fresh air. There is a famous joke that is often told in Kenya that Gatanga people are very light skinned, bold and beautiful which I think is somewhat true because of one of our renown politician Peter Kenneth-whom many of us have nicknamed as “PK” (but not the chewing gum); who once a famous Gatanga Member of Parliament hails from here and will be remembered by many for giving farmers free seedlings to plant trees a few years back when I was still abroad. Needless to emphasize our village is so green and we are also privileged to be also very near Ndakaini Dam which supplies a lot of the water we Nairobians drink in the densely populated capital city of Nairobi, Kenya. I have also mentioned previously that sadly my parents did not have the privilege of going to school let alone furthering their education. Infact my dad being the most responsible older son of 4 had to drop off class 1 to start hustling and feed for his younger siblings so he started burning charcoal which supplemented their small scale farming income and later took a reap of faith to venture into his transportation business which he has diligently done to date and which is the business that enabled him educate all of us without any extravagant bank loans. Mind you unlike other parts of Kenya, Gatanga people generally own very little pieces of land for farming but on the contrary the red soil in that region is extremely fertile.  Soils emanating from the volcanic activity are generally fertile and important for agriculture. The slopes in the rich volcanic soils on the higher altitudes are particularly suitable for tea growing. as it falls in the North of the Equator producing one of the Highest grades of Coffee that is consumed globally. So basically we produce the best coffee, tea, bananas, daily farming (daily cows) and fresh vegetables which do extremely well. The flip side of that fertile land is that the tiny size of the land is that Gatanga farmers could never maximum farming benefits of economics of scale as most of their local produce would either be sold to brokers and the cash crops such as tea and coffee sold to the Cooperative movements –and even our dairies were mostly zero-grazed due to lack of enough land to graze around?

So obviously when I left Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) I knew right of the bet that I had no choice but to study seriously and work exceptionally harder than everyone else abroad in order to “liberate” my loving parents from the yolks of poverty back home as well be able to support them to at least educate the rest of my siblings whom by the time I left Kenya some were quite young. I will never forget how my lovely extended family escorted me out of JKIA Airport. The picture of my late mother Nduta (who has since passed on) and our last born brother Jay all kissing me goodbye with a sweet sour tears of love in his eyes who at the time was a very young kid in lower primary school never left my mind in all my years abroad. Every time I would be recall that epic JKIA escort scene reminded that I have such a huge God given responsibility to make sure that I was the “hope” for my self-less parents who had sacrificed so much for our large family of 8. Their farewell tears were both sweet because they were happy that finally someone in our humble family was finally going abroad to the so called “land of honey” which was a renewed hope of God indeed opening new doors of opportunity to liberate our family from a poverty-stricken background to abundance but the tears were in the same token sour because like I mentioned nobody else in our family tree (let alone our entire village) had ever left the country previously so there a bit of anxiety in them that they might never see me again –am sure they wondered once I landed in America if I would ever remember them or even ever want to come back home ever again. America in 2001 was super hyped as the land of grand opportunities!

This story can only get better because when we left JKIA, just when we were about to taxi off the runaway (from what I often hilariously call my “coming to America” debut) …the jumbo KLM flight developed some mechanical problem and we had to stay an extra night in Nairobi City…the airline management was gracious enough to book us hotel rooms at the Hilton Hotel, Nairobi. Remember those days having a mobile phone was such a huge luxury that only the rich could afford and we did not have cellular phones like our little teenagers nowadays have …so this flight delay my parents to date don’t about and anyway even if I had a way of calling home at the time I am sure my late mother would have either revoked visa for my travelling abroad  –scared to death about my safety in the first place if not even questioning how a flying object would exactly get us to our American destination safely (remember I stated none of my family members had flown before….and even for me the farthest I had flown out prior was to Maasai Mara…so even for me at this I also wondered how safe this KLM plane would get us to the promised land of America where so called “milk and honey” was plenty so to say). Needless to say that we eventually flew and when we landed in Amsterdam where our connection flight to America was to happen. Like JKIA flight mechanical issue was not good enough for a first time overseas traveler, just a few hours after taking off Schiphol International Airport the pilot made a very sudden disturbing announcement that the plane had to reroute back to Amsterdam for an “emergency landing” which he actually intelligently choose not to explain much.  To say that at this point the “analytical-freak” in me now had started questioning if this “Coming to America” adventure was exactly the best decision that I ever made? And for those of you readers who are believers like me, such moments are when the devil thrives because he has a special way of bringing suspicion and wishful thinking…where you even start having self-doubtful self-talk such “didn’t I tell you not to travel?”! You should have listened to your mama?” “Why did you bother taking so much risk flying out of Kenya?” “Show me one person in your whole village who dared to fly out before you?” “Gatanga was just fine after all your parents and even your great grand parents have lived there all their life-and they are just fine?” “What makes you think you are different?” “Why do you think you are smarter and better than them-why did you risk all this trouble of leaving Kenya and for what?” As the devil took control of my brain I did not realize how fast time flew, for a few minutes I even lost count of time but I can tell you by God’s mercies we safely landed back in Schiphol International Airport ! What I saw first when we embarked the plane will blow your mind! All the TV monitors in the Airport instead of showing updated flight times, were all showing breaking news of how the Twin towers in New York City had just been blown up by terrorist and for almost a split second it felt like the entire world had almost literally come to a stand still in shock! Put yourself in my shoes for a quick second and imagine it’s September 11^th 2001 and you are flying to a foreign land for the very first time, have no cell phone to call home and even worst even if you were to call home you would never be able to reach your humble parents who have no direct phones ….they had no emails, what’s app messages that you could easily email them or  send to distance relatives, siblings or near-by rich neighbors who could let your sweet loving mother that you were indeed stranded in a foreign transit airport all alone and the world largest America twin tower where your plane was destined to first land few hours ago has just been bombed! Talk about crisis, confusion, shocking fear and dilemma madness! My heart goes out to all the thousands of innocent lives of thousands people who died in this cowardly act of massacre and their family members left behind whose life’s will never be the same again! Such cruel acts of terrorism should be fearlessly condoned globally! For those of you who never really understand why I passionately talk about fearless leadership and influencing others to make a difference…now you know why!! And indeed when I talk about the fact I am a 100% sure that God has a special purpose for my darling life and indeed he has showed it to me too many times. He literally saved me from this September 11 terror attacks and this is one of the many incidences besides Wallstreet Global credit crisis where God has saved me and I can tell you for a fact without a single shadow of doubt that when  God created me he gave me a special assignment to impact lifes and he has been so deliberate about it that such real life events are a constant reminder that he is indeed not done with my life’s purpose on earth and that I had better fulfill God’s will over my life(not my own) before my expiration dates on this beautiful planet earth. God did not have time make a nobody! Not in me and not in any one of us….and that’s why we must make sure that the limited time he has granted us on earth that we maximize on it and impact lifes like today is your last day of our assignment on earth! My own personal September 11^th bombing in New York survival story is too long to narrate here so look out for my next book of how us innocent travelers were stranded in a strange foreign Schiphol airport for close to a week? Don’t ask me how we all quickly turned the airport to a “camping-site” (sleeping bags, food donations, water) due to all international flights cancellations globally… but the beautiful ending is that after the “dust settled” all airports finally opened and we travelled again and I finally made it to my final destination, Boston Massachusetts and was ready to live my “Coming to America” dream again.

Fast forward as soon as I landed in America, the first “culture shock” for me was the fact that I quickly realized that my sweet self-less loving parents were not ever gonna afford to be sending me school fees and maintenance fees every month like I had ambitiously imagined in my “wild ambitious dreams” when I was leaving Kenya.  Mind you before I left Kenya I had already applied and had successfully been accepted by one of the most prestigious private university in Boston for their 2001 September intake. So as soon as i landed in Logan airport, I needed to start my grad school immediately. Talk about destiny shapers! God made a miraculous way for me to be hosted by fellow Kenyans (whom I still call family till date) for a few months before I could settle in and figure my way around using the small KES savings I had accrued in my precious short working life at Seaforth Shipping Mombasa right after my first degree – Kenyatta University graduation. And to cut the long story short, God made a special way for me to be able to get a part time job and at the same time I was able to convince the University to allow me to switch my full time studies to part time evening classes (a culture which was very popular in America unlike Kenya which was a rare arrangement back in 2001). Talk about being highly favored by the almighty? I saw God’s favor happening right in front of my eyes. When I left Kenya, just like many of us those days assumed (and I think even up to date) that America is indeed the land where “milk and honey flows freely” and everything is literally provided free of charge – many still believe that USA is like the story of manna from heaven in the old testament bible. This is not the case, so allow me demystify this here because I am a true testimony to what working hard in America is all about!               The profound truth is that the most powerful place on earth is not American’s Whitehouse or Kenya’s Statehouse but it is in your mind folks! The mindset that I left JKIA with had to quickly change 360 degrees if I was to survive let alone thrive in America.  Lucky for me at least I was very open minded and I was hard working; some of the precious gifts that God has graced me with and I must say it’s a great survival skill to have as a leader-being open to new ideas or said differently like I mentioned in my previous articles, change is indeed inevitable, you either adopt to change or risk being extinct! When The Dean of Students at Northeastern graciously accepted my switch my classes to evening school, I quickly started looking for work and as you all know by now Kenyans are everywhere you go in the world, after talking to a few Kenyans living in Boston at the time I got wind that a reputable Japanese School was hiring English teachers and I was over the moon over the thought that I could get finally a golden opportunity in a foreign land to work and earn in (wait for it) American dollars, uuumhhh? Can you see the huge smile on my face the day I showed up at the Japanese school; Boston Higashi School innocently applying for a teaching job (by the way for the records Kenyans are globally known as one of the few Africans who have a fantastic “command of the English language” and a big shout out to my Gatunguru Primary school teachers who put in the extra work of teaching me the Queen’s language …as you already know my parents were my favorite first teachers but unfortunately did not secure much education to teach me in English….so I am forever grateful and everywhere I go I always salute my school teachers for heavily investing in me…may the sweet Lord always bless the work of your hands). Of course many of the native Americans would always ask us wherever we went “where are you guys from?” because I believe they admired our unique Kenyan accent and I know it sounds hilarious for some of you who have set foot to America but it’s different when you actually live in America trust you me, it’s not funny being stopped everywhere you speak and being asked where you come from even before you can introduce yourself but hey- “Black Lives Matter” or won’t you agree with me that we really matter?

I joined Northeastern University and the fact that I was actually personally paying for my own school fees in a foreign currency from my blood and sweat (contrary to my prior high expectations when I left Kenya) I think quickly matured my responsibilities fast and furious! I have never studies so hard in my school life! I am strong believer of what Nelson Mandera often said that “In Education lies the ability to change the whole world” especially because my parents believed that if they sacrificed everything they owed just to educate all of us especially myself- that their life would be liberated for better once I secured the big well-paying jobs of my dreams. Of course when left Kenya I had already graduated with a second- upper class honors at Kenyatta University and had literally made my mama proud, but the minute I started paying my own school fees I “felt the pinch of paying my own fees” which was a life changing moment….and I took my studies triple seriously! Sure enough my hard work paid off because in the first year of my school abroad I successfully made it in the prestigious “Dean’s List”. Working in Boston Higashi school was an equally exciting yet humbling life changing opportunity for me because I had never ever taught before yet these beautiful teenage girls many who hailed from very diverse backgrounds -mainly Japanese, few American Jewish kids from the super wealthy New York city families. Did I also mention that I was forced by circumstances to open a brand new-my first American Bank account because my new employer paid us every forth night which was another “culture shock” for me coming straight from the “so called jungle” because my former employer Seaforth Shipping Kenya paid us obviously only once at the end of every month without fail! Am sure you are beginning to sense my excitement then, this is the part where you loudly say “Welcome to America Maggie the land of honey and milk.” …because like seriously who would have thought that people in certain parts of the world enjoy 2 fat pay cheques twice a month…like who does that? But hey after sometime I obviously got used to it and hey hey it’s not like I was complaining but it was super exciting to say the least in my first year…and life was going great! I was so focused, getting stellar academic grades in school which was my primary reason of coming to America and receiving solid American dollar cheques direct into my newly opened American bank account every fortnight!

They say when you are thriving always be aware that the devil ain’t sleeping… infact the bible so rightly says in the book of XXXXXX “the devil is like a hungry roaring lion, and he comes to steal, kill and destroy! And that’s why I personally believe that when you are thriving always never forget to pray much harder… because when you are excelling in abundance it’s when you attract the devil who comes “fully dressed” to attack you the most! It actually also reminds me of my brilliant Primary class teacher who used to remind us daily that “the higher you go the cooler it becomes.”  And in Leadership circles it’s always “very lonely at the top”….and like my fellow award winning motivational speaker Denzel Washington is fond of reminding us to put God first and that more importantly he says “when you to go sleep…remember to deliberately hide your slippers under your bed so that in the morning the first thing you do when you wake up is to kneel down and thank your maker and spend quit time with him thanking him and asking him for guidance to not only lead you but that him alone orders your steps”!  And just like that there came my “Lucy Hurt” moment! Since I was one of the newest hires in Boston Higashi School and I was so busy minding my business, I had taken not note of all the supervisors’ names as my key focus was in effectively teaching the awesome teenage girls some who looked up to us teachers as their role models, as their confidants, in some cases some of them who needed behavioral modification programs set and others who came from broken families and were hurting inside considered us as their newly-found family members that they never had before joining the school. I had only met Mr Chris White, the supervisor who had taken us through the staff induction process. Then one day Chris White introduced me to my new supervisor, Mrs Lucy Hurt who then had been promoted recently and had therefore been moved to the section where I was teaching and that’s when my work- life-teaching experience took a different twist altogether! Since I have so much respect for humanity and I will restrain from explaining of how Lucy Hurt physical features looked like, but I will attempt to paint a mental picture to you of how my “Lucy Hurt experience” looked like and once I am done with my description of her I want you to be honest with me and also share with me candidly if you have had a “Lucy Hurt” in your business or career life? Shall we?

Have you ever had a boss who admires your exceptional well-articulated work competence and your “eye for details” perfectionism work ethics  from a distance especially how you handle your customers with “world class- unmatched excellence”, how you treat all mankind seriously with so much dignity, your professional work ethics from your unmatched sparkling dress code-arriving 30 minutes before your shift starts (remember I had just came from the jungle not ever thinking I would work in America and get paid forth night so when I got this first humbling job I took the assignment 100 times more seriously and I guess that’s the reason I had never been late for work even despite the fact that I used to come to work straight from my Northeastern University part time classes)? Remember I was one of the new hires but being the “people’s person” and a natural sanguine…every Boston Higashi staff regardless of their nationality would always find it so easy to come over to talk to me as i am naturally love diversity and I was absolutely loved and cherished by not only the rest of school management and the students except by one Mrs Lucy Hurt! The students loved me to bits and I remember it was a bit awkward because they would all behave exceptionally well during my work shift that sometimes the more experienced staff now started come to learn from me…asking how comes even the “behaviorally-challenged” students would behave so differently well and even listen to my simple verbal directions unlike my peers despite the fact that I was newest teacher in the school. Theodore Roosevelt was absolutely correct and goes without saying that “people don’t care how much you know, how big your title is until they know that you really care” and this was exactly what was happening in Boston Higashi School. Sadly, as a result of all my exceptional performance Lucy Hurt would not let me thrive, and I can tell you for a fact she “hated me with a wild passion” and it was so bad that at some point she could not hide it any more “physically and verbally” an inch!

Have you ever had a boss who shamelessly humiliates you in-front of everyone for no reason? Even worse have you ever had a boss who no matter what you do it’s never good enough to her double standards? Even worse do you currently have a boss who practices double standards over the exact same work you do and even when you “burst your bottoms” by going the extra mile it never counts and she/he really pretends not to notice your exceptional unmatched performance? It’s only fantastically exceptional performance when it’s done by her/his lazy big talkers -“favorite staff” who do nothing but “kiss-ass”? Or what about that boss who awards different pay-and rewards the kiss ass big talkers who do no work at your expense and does not “give a hoot” whether you walked to work or crawled home late at night, and such a boss categorically shows no interest in your personal growth? Sadly, there are so many managers who have no passion for the job nor for people they are leading! They are more concerned about big fancy titles, their self-gratifying fame, their big offices they occupy, some are more concerned about the temporary power granted to them in their current positions and are busy using their employees as stepping stones. If that’s your current scenario my dear reader, then welcome to my Lucy Hurt Syndrome? Big mistake! Have you ever quit a job because of poor discriminative treatment or not even much of a thank you after taking initiation for a job well done with a boss whose is so out of touch with the times? Do you have a boss who is full of themselves and all they do is “bark orders like the old days before unions came around and expect the employee to jump and do as told without reason like robots”? Many bosses have this attitude that anyone is replaceable easily like gloves, that they can hire someone even better. So they keep treating employees poorly. They do disservice to their company. A good employee has knowledge of systems, products and processes. They have built relationships with clients and co-workers which takes years to build. When you lose a good employee, you lose part of your company culture. And you may lose your own future. Never push loyal employees to the point where they no longer give a damn! If you don’t have a heart, you should not be in leadership positions in the first place. What if your only real influence is to spend all day working very selfishly and hurriedly in the name of the so called “essentialism-ballony” which leads to limiting all your subordinates’ ability to influence? In my experience, A leader is one who is invisible as an individual and visible in every other individual in the team. This could happen only when his thoughts and breath are in unison for his team and the cause. most people love to step on others as long as they can get to the top. At any cost. Those who dedicate themselves to others, with integrity love and honesty, are considered weak and not activists. God has put us in leadership positions for us to guide, inspire, teach, mentor, coach and help others to become better than yourself -for his honor and glory (not for our own) . This is how you make a lasting impact. One of my favorite quote on leadership by Jack Welch which am sure many of you reader will agree with says “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”

This continued for a while and even though I loved my job and the impact I was making on these madly gifted young teenager students, Lucy Hurt Syndrome was really “pushing me to the wall.” Luckily I am firm believer that when two doors shut for you by mere mortal men or women especially if you are an obedient faithful servant in what God has called you to do, the almighty never-failing able God will always open an extra 10 bigger doors for you right in front of the enemies and for God’s honor and glory! Remember I was already shining as the only African Student in Northeastern University’s Dean’s list and our school Administration was already aggressively advocating for young bright hardworking students like myself to privately secure Internships with Boston’s Biggest Multinationals. Lucky for me I was actually selected by the prestigious State Street Bank of Boston (one of the largest global custodian) to work for them and offered a full time entry level job –as a Cusip data entry position in their Wealth Management Division. My life has never been the same again folks! I rose up the American Corporate ladder strictly by merit, my employer even proceeded and paid for my Master’s Degree again in one of Boston’s best schools….by the time I resigned to relocate back to my beautiful jungle in 2010, I had broken all the glass ceilings and succeeded abroad. Later on whenever I would meet Mrs Lucy Hurt in private social gatherings, she would be so ashamed and couldn’t stand face to face with me…but the dare devil in me would walk over to her and shake her hand firmly… (having forgiven her years back)…I would almost be tempted to whisper to “Thanks to your Lucy Hurt Syndrome…you accelerated me to my God destined success.” Talk about God’s faithfulness for a girl who grew up in a small Gatanga village, not only succeeded in America but thrived just the way God had intended it to be. Of course I dare say it was not a walk in the park, many are times I would stop and ask my maker “Excuse me God, I got questions?” but here we are absolutely free from Mrs Hurt Syndrome! May this article be a special reminder and encouragement to someone out there. Who is your “Lucy Hurt” currently? Do you know that they might be your accelerator gear that will actually push you to your God-speed destiny that you would otherwise never have dared to achieve!

            It’s not rare to find employees who hate their bosses or who spite their bosses just because they don’t give them the value and respect they deserve and eventually the employees become obstinate towards taking corrections and therefore leading to low productivity of the employee. An organization will operate more efficiently if employees have no barriers to communicating with each other. Communication problems often occur as a result of differences between colleagues or poor relationships between managers and employees. Power struggles, lack of integrity, poor corporate governance and loose moral fabric in corporate board rooms or where executive leadership are constantly infighting for power due to uncertainties in poorly structured succession planning has in the past shut down certain companies that many believed were “too big to fail” Kenyan super markets such as Nakumatt and Tuskys Supermarkets too were brought down their knees. Working together, openly discussing opinions, being willing to accept constructive criticism and respecting all employees’ views are good examples of communication. Investigations from the Huma resources departments with unconscious bias without favoring the top bosses is key. Bringing both your heart and ears to listen to all your employees that can audit their boss according an unbiased party that can fairly assess the underlying issue with an aim of resolving issues amicably especially if a toxic environment quietly or loudly exists there. There is always two sides to any story just like there are in a coin…without which this is how bullying environments are quietly created. No one side should only be heard… All sides of a complaint need to be weighed in on. I just don’t understand this thought process of it being someone else’s responsibility for another individual to grow… As a leader you are to share, train and inspire others. Otherwise picking favorites- deliberating only growing only those whose style resonates with yours and applying tokenism in Diversity and Inclusion is pure baloney because different personality types that will see differently from their leader. Individuals grow tremendously when they follow a leader that have a similar disposition, motivation, reasoning, logic and understanding. Great leaders know how to “Be strong, but not rude; Be kind, but not weak; Be bold, but not bully; Be humble, but not timid; Be confident but not arrogant.”

May this article encourage you to always remember that even in your “Lucy Hurt Syndrome” challenges lies many untapped opportunities!

The FEARLESS SUMMIT is our annual gathering of church and marketplace leaders like myself who are madly passionate about bringing change in every sector of our society. We literally “smoke, drink, sleep, wake, dream and inhale” positive transformation towards ending poverty and social injustices of all manners in our society. The distinguishing factor which is attracted me to be part of this Fearless Community is that fact we specifically designed the Summit as a solutions-oriented platform and is therefore a game-changer, offering unmatched real opportunities for all our attendees. It’s no surprise that the previous physical events attracted about 1,000 delegates from over 4 continents and this year even with the pandemic we had over 3,700 delegates who registered for the event online at the comfort of their home. This year was extra special being our 11^th Edition of the Fearless Summit but more exciting that it was also our very first ever virtual summit, with a very timely theme named “Be The Spark: Sparking Change for a new normal” It was held from Monday 20^th July to Sunday; 26^th July 2020. Speaking at the opening plenary session, our Visionary Founder -Pastor Muriithi Wanjau started us off on fire and to date i vividly remember his exact words and I quote “the entire world is experiencing its biggest crisis ever since the Second World War, yet in every crisis there lies an opportunity for change. As the church we are mandated to be at the center of societal change and transformation. This can be done by intentionally providing relief support to those who are in crisis. Then moving from crisis management to helping people support themselves in the new normal and then moving from sustainability to long-term God-Centered societal change.”  There are very powerful sentiments from our very own Kenyan change-agent and indeed this speaks volumes and will resonate with me for a very long time. I could not agree more with Pastor M (like most of us normally call him) because that’s exactly why God created us in the first place. His words not only reminded me of Genesis 1:28 creation story which says “God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” The summit also featured prominent gospel artists such as Mercy Masika, Eunice Njeri, Noel Nderitu, Charles Rigga, Joel Maluki and Laura Karwira among many others; which was a great way of showcasing to the whole world of the amazing extraordinary God-given talent in Arts & Music Sector we have right here in Kenya. The event featured both international and local thought-leaders from all walks of life, who passionately shared from their heart inspirational, practical, well researched content and building nuggets across various sectors of the economy. 

One of the session that I thoroughly enjoyed was the Future of Work session, a subject I have been mentoring on and monitoring closely for a few years now around leveraging latest technological innovations. Indeed this was very timely considering how this deadly Coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the working environment like we knew it a big deal. Speaking on the Future of Work plenary under the Business & Economics sector, which had Kenya’s well respected innovator himself Mr Sam Gichuru and our wisest Professor Dr Bitange Ndemo who literally ‘brought the house’ down by his powerful closing remarks when he stated “any career which has repetitive work will soon be replaced by robots. To maintain your career, you need to unlearn, re-learn and also learn new skills to remain relevant.” They shared some of amazing things happening in the technology space and how the virtual reality is impacting not only practical education online, medical/health management, online shopping, financial institution’s credit scoring to supply chains management in this 4^th industrial revolution. They challenged us to rethink how we are utilizing our basic resources available right in our hands especially our mobile devices. God has given us so many natural talents but we must constantly upgrade ourselves with the dynamic times to stay relevant and acquire new practical skills. We can’t afford to simply feel entitled, do nothing to improve our value (skill sets) and still hope to remain competitive. Entitlement kills competitiveness.  Sam Gichuru urged Kenyan citizens to stop always complaining about the government by boldly challenging us by asking us, “What have you personally or at a corporate level done to improve the unemployment situation in the country? We should each take responsibility for our children not having jobs and endeavor to create employment. Teach your kids practical skills in your house.”  

To be honest listening to the wisdom from Sam Gichuru who has been there done that was music to my ears. Sam is the founder and CEO of Nailab,is a business incubator focused on providing the right ingredients to turn local business ideas into viable startups located in Nairobi. He is also Co-founder at Kuhustle- a startup company that sources for projects across the globe using skilled African freelancers to deliver the jobs. Their discussions is the one I resonated with my purpose driven life and it reminded me of the burden that God has put in my heart years back hence the reason I have been mentoring Youths all the globe in matters Entrepreneurship and Employability skills. It brought back fresh memories of how when COVID-19 hit Kenya and all were schools closed, many teens and youths were devastated (joblessness, hopelessness, idleness, lack of finances and others displaced). In April 2020 six of us from different sectors (we call ourselves “The Magnificent 6” aka M6 came together and we started virtually mentoring these Youths every week in the evening after work via Zoom on topics they requested that are very relevant and practical. We have so far mentored over 600 Youths and still going strong. Many of them have gotten job opportunities (Gold Avenue Africa) and others have been able to start Micro businesses to feed themselves and others who had shut their businesses have now reopened and are able to make sales online-networked online via our Nduta Angels Foundation, & eMentoring Africa via our Weekly Mentor’s Parlour.  Others have joined hands together to start small agribusiness ventures that are generating them group incomes and my heart is full of joy to see what is doing through us to transform lifes-indeed it’s amazing when we heed to God’s calling. So i totally agree with the good old Professor & Sam a 1001 percent because a lot of times we Kenyans are very quick to critique the Government. And while in principle yes I too strongly think that our Government can obviously do much better than it’s currently doing. But at the same time can we be very honest with ourselves and start by asking ourselves individually the hard questions as custodians of God’s kingdom on earth? What have we individually done this far to make a difference on our part? One of my favorite leader is the late John F. Kennedy’s and whenever I sense exhaustion in serving my country (which is full of corrupt-greed ridden leaders which seems to rub me the wrong way) i often listen to his inaugural speech years back where he inspired children and adults to see the importance of civic action and public service. His historic words are the driving force for everything I do in my sphere of influence including the solutions I develop for my Women and Youths that I currently serve in the Kenyan Banking sector at the State Bank of Mauritius (SBM Bank Kenya) which stated, “Ask not what your country can do for you – instead ask what you can do for your country,” .J.K. Kennedy in his speech challenged his fellow Americans to contribute in some way to the public good and many years later I still find this speech very relevant to our current our Kenyan economy. Can you imagine how awesome and prosperous our Kenya would be if we were all doing our bear minimum part to contribute positively towards re-building our beautiful country’s GDP?

Mentors Parlour: CHANGING MINDSETS with Margaret Kimani (This is one of our sessions) https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=46hZg4xLiUw

Speaking about mentorship in the Media, Arts & Creative industry was our very own “Churchill“, a Kenyan comedian who hosts the comedy television show Churchill Show on NTV Kenya on Sundays and Thursdays who has worked in the comedy industry since 1996 and has now become a household name in Kenya. His real name is Daniel ‘Churchill’ Ndambuki who really encouraged artists to create platforms that would bring aboard more local artists to give them the much needed visibility and build their brands especially now because this sector is one of the worst hit by COVID-19 lock downs as most social gatherings in Kenya were suspended as well as major events. “Your platform is not just for you. It is for you to lift others up as you were lifted,” said Churchill. One of the other speakers I thoroughly enjoyed listening to was Pastor Moses Mukisa, Senior Pastor of Worship Harvest, Kampala Uganda urged church leaders to quickly adopt to technology and not shy away from it nor resist change. “Have no excuse for failing to move onto the technology platforms. If you have a mobile phone, you have a stage to offer solutions to a global audience.” In the same summit, our inventor eloquent unstoppable Dr Aghan Oscar shared on how he is improving the environment by turning recycled plastic waste into affordable building materials such as roofing tiles and building blocks. Indeed, there are so many opportunities for us to fearless innovate, be the spark to changing the world like Dr Aghan did.

As a young busy career mom who is now also homeschooling our 6 years old Princess Amani, it was very encouraging and reassuring to me to listen to our seasoned Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Gladys Mwiti during the Family and Education sector session who clearly stated, “some families have become stronger with the pandemic, however others have grown weaker. I recommend that each family sets up a weekly family business meeting to discuss how to navigate this pandemic.” I found this very helpful and practical so I have somewhat started having savings conversations with my daughter whenever she asks for her favorite candies and chocolates during our evening walk I ask her if she has any money in her piggybank.

In the digital technology plenary led by Communication Enthusiast; Pastor David Kuria had the panelists drawn from different parts of the world who shared their realities. It led us to discover that the church must pivot to adapt to the new normal without really loosing it’s intended purpose and meaning as we have seen lately most churches migrating to offering online and like the award winning Digital Content Creator Richard Njau noted that “infact churches are now creating more content than Hollywood.” Who would have ever imagined that we would do away with physical church gatherings ever! The session ended with a wise caution that the online quantity of church online content does not always guarantee impactful quality of discipleship. Authenticity and being real is mission critical even as we move to online services. Unlike the world, the church cannot focus solely on chasing after “views and likes” as opposed to discipleship as God intended it to be. We discussed what it’s like being a leader during mega crisis and Pastor Eric Geiger concluded it for us using the Napoleon definition that “the role of a leader is to define reality and give others hope.” He urged us all to honestly define for our followers what the context of our new reality is with honesty including helping them to grief because the truth is there is plenty of losses realities caused by this unprecedented crisis. Leaders are made during crisis so giving people hope includes reminding them that Jesus will rebuild what has been lost during this crisis. We must make sure we help our direct teams and followers to make best use of new opportunities arising out of this crisis such as digitization, streamlining processes, automation of redundant non value adding processes, making best use of their time now to reskill, unlearn and retool themselves to greater heights. Dr Henz also challenged us to go back to our own roots, communities, neighborhoods and begin the transformational initiatives that will cause an army of ordinary men and women become fearless change agents.

Speaking of being Fearless and how I have been so blessed to be the Spark, today as i write is one of the highly celebrated days globally as it marks The International Youth Day and considering that the majority of the world population is dominated by Youths ranging from ages o to 35 years. This year’s theme was “Youth engagement for Global Action”- by involving youths at the local, national and global level. But even as we celebrate this very important day I can’t help but the empathize with our Youths from the 2 sides of the coin…on one side of this coin there are Youths who are have become the Game Changers in their spheres some even at a very early age. These are youths who have created real solutions that are solving world problems and are living to see their goals come to fruition right before their wildest dreams and some at a very early age. Such Youths have even pushed their envelopes so far that they have become employers at a very early age. One such example is our very own Nancy Amunga who is the Founder of Dana Logistics who at a very early age created a door-to- door delivery services business that is now creating employment – feeding families even during this global crisis. She has received several, both local and international awards. She was selected as the Commonwealth Young Entrepreneur of the year during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in London, UK and he was an honoree of the African Achievers Awards for social impact category at the House of Commons in London, UK amongst many other local awards which includes Top 25 Under 25 Entrepreneurs in Kenya (2015). Another example is our 19 year-old Yuri Corrette who I am so privileged to have mentored along the way who started a Water project that is supplying clean water in Kenya’s informal sectors while he was still in Lenana high school. Another amazing example is young Mboya who we is supporting to drive the “SDGs-Mtaani” agenda in the slums giving a new lease of hope and income generating streams to the idle youths in Mukuru Kwa Jenga slums while recruiting other youths to impact their informal settings. And it’s not like these game makers have got their lifes 100% perfect or fully figured out but it’s just that they choose to not focus on their sole gain alone but they choose to the spark we are talking about in the summit –by putting the needs of others first which is selfless. Sadly on the other side of this coin there are also youths who have lost jobs, others who have lost hope, others due to bad peer pressure have negatively impacted and lament having “used” by political leaders who in turn do not advocate for an enabling environment for youths to thrive, other youths who were locked out of schools who were to graduate this year are feeling wasted, desperate, lonely and hopeless wondering what this new world can possibly ever offer after such a crazy crisis.

With tall these challenges in mind I couldn’t help but reminisce over how lucky I am to be part of Fearless Community in Mavuno Church, Hill City Campus. Like I mentioned at the beginning we at Fearless are like minded ordinary people who are very passionate about bringing change to every sector of the economy because “iron indeed sharpens iron.” At Fearless Institute and we totally believe that we are called to be the change agents in our own areas of influence in our everyday lifes. And for sure a candle does not diminish its bright light by lighting another candle and if you have read this far i believe you have been inspired enough to immediately start being the Spark that God the almighty made you to be. Choose your path of your life that lights you the most, take chances, live life passionately and be the fearless influencer of society because like Normal Cousins rightly put it “the tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we still live.” It is no doubt 2020 will sit in our memories for some years to come as the year that forced us to adjust, unlearn and relearn a new way of living in this new world of masking, constantly sanitizing and social distancing. For some it has been incredibly difficult, some have figured out how to thrive in this new trying season, some have been lucky and some unlucky. Let’s not be afraid to fail in being the spark or even being afraid of not trying in the first place. And instead of competing with say China why not dare ourselves to create local innovations ourselves?

Yes indeed we can!

#BeTheSpark #FearlessSummit2020 #FearlessInfluencersOfSociety

#ChangeMakers #ServantLeaders

#ChangeMakers #ServantLeaders

“People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – Theodore Roosevelt

I strongly believe that the heart is the most critical part of leadership. For many years, people have led from their head only, but now more than ever, many agree that head and heart need to work together. According to Susan Steinbrecher, executive coach and leadership speaker, ‘Heart-Centered Leadership means having the wisdom, courage and compassion to lead others with authenticity, transparency, humility and service.’ “You lead by encouragement and inspiration, not by fear and control. Research has shown that putting people first by encouraging and motivating employees, companies can expect unlimited wells of creativity, initiative, taking ownership and productivity.  The psychological and financial rewards are equally amazing too.

In today’s business environment, one can have award-winning ideas and brilliant strategy in paper, even go the extra mile to hire the “crème Della-crème” staff from Ivy League Universities.  But if they fail to connect with your employees at the heart level, bring purpose, compassion, connections and inspiration into the workspace, then chances of success as a leader are highly compromised. Leading from the heart literally means that they are “all- in” for you and with you and will go out of their way to do anything whether you are present or not to make things happen. This will in turn most definitely reflect in your company’s bottom line which is a win-win for all.  Is leading from the heart a natural instinct or can it be learnt? The late Bob Collymore, former CEO at Safaricom PLC, a great philanthropic and visionary leader was such a rare gem of such leaders that am talking about. I was so privileged to have met Bob during my youth mentorship sessions in one of the Kenyan public Universities and like many Kenyans, I was greatly inspired by his servant leadership right from the onset. Bob was loved by many and his death left many shattered and in disbelief for weeks to date. I was personally so much in denial that I sadly did not have even the strength to attend his memorial service and a year later I still don’t get it. Though a British citizen, Bob’s death in June 2019 felt like a robbery to many hearts and to the Kenyan economy at large.  As Carley Bowman rightly put it “the passing away of a mobile phone operator would normally pass without much notice beyond immediate family and work colleagues. But Bob’s as he was universally known, was very different.”  To know Bob was to know a fearless leader who served from deep-down his heart, one who genuinely loved and valued people and believed that Safaricom existed to truly transform peoples’ lives. Bob stood by these values both at work and in the community. But really what differentiated Bob Collymore with the former telco boss Michael Joseph (who many of us like teasing as Mr. MJ)? Let’s all face it, Michael Joseph was a “tough cookie”, no-nonsense and no doubt a shrewd engineer having built the Safaricom company for over 10 years before Bob came onboard. Indeed, the success of Safaricom sits at the heart of Michael Joseph and history will always celebrate him for building one the most unrivalled telco’s in East Africa – making Safaricom a global case study mainly due to the MPESA mobile money innovation. Funny enough, when Bob first joined Safaricom, the media harshly described “Michael’s shoes being bigger for Bob”. This is usually intimidating for any leader but whenever journalists asked Bob how he planned to fit into Michael’s big shoes, they were met with a confident smile and a calm grin–which they got used to well after some time. Bob’s unique character that many described as “soft man from outside but tough from inside” went through what most people go through when they take up a new leadership position especially if their predecessor was hailed as a “demi-god” and I too can attest I have been through the same where people underestimate your capabilities let alone your academic qualifications which I can tell you for free is super annoying. Pessimists second guessed Bob and his qualifications wondering if he even had the right academic qualifications let alone the right skill sets for this huge job. It’s so true, they say never judge a book simply by its cover! His critics later realized that Safaricom board and his recruiters had seen something in Bob that the general “know-it-all” public could not decipher at the moment. In my opinion the main differentiator for Bob’s legacy was simple – he simply led from the heart! His predecessor was such a techie who was very experienced in running a telco but it seemed that at the time when Bob took over, what was needed in Safaricom’s growth trajectory stage was the corporate affairs soft skills which brought tremendous transformation at Safaricom, accelerating its much celebrated success globally even after Bob Collymore’s death.

So, what made Mr. Collymore so special, especially to the people he led? Bob brought a radical new normal of running the telco especially to his unsuspecting then senior management who had been used to “same old same old” traditional way of running and doing things. So much so that the special VVIP (very important person) faster moving escalator at Safaricom’s Waiyaki Way headquarters to 8^th floor eventually had to be gotten rid off because Bob believed management should be treated the same way as other junior employees. Many of his former staff recall vividly how Bob brought in a fresh free-spiritedness at Safaricom work environment removing many traditional barriers of communication which caused annoying bureaucracies that previously “killed” employees’ morale. All of over sudden thanks to Bob, employees could work in a more efficient, free, effective and productive environment that rewarded top talent purely on merit. Many Kenyans couldn’t believe that this British-accented new CEO would have lunch with his junior employees at their Gazebo. This was a shocker! They had never seen or heard any leader coming from his VIP 8^th top floor specially reserved office down to the regular employee’s space and having real conversations with them. In the beginning, some of the introverted employees thought that Bob was spying on them if not being “corny” but he successfully broke the man-made hierarchy limiting barriers that always existed between regular junior employees and their top senior management, which was exactly what he wanted to achieve. Bob furthered endeavored himself to his staff member by attending their regular engagements whenever his pretty demanding busy schedule allowed. Such decisions ushered in a very different perspective on leadership at Safaricom moving from a top-down to horizontal kind of leadership. Bob took it upon himself to bring in some level of equality and Safaricom’s sustainability statistics show that during his tenure, he appointed many women at Safaricom to top management positions. Bob will be remember by Kenyan women of all spheres because he was an unapologetic gender equality champion which he truly believed was key towards economic Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since women make up more than 51 % of Kenyan population as well as world’s population. During Bob’s tenure he introduced and greatly supported breastfeeding for lactating Safaricom’s young mothers at work by allocating a special space for them. This was revolutionary! His caring, inclusive thinking and the science behind this was to make new moms at Safaricom work peacefully, productively without having to worry about their precious infants who would have been at home with a nanny.
Besides the internal transformation, he also cared deeply about the customers they served and brought much needed change at Safaricom’s customer care centers, where the customer experience before Bob’s was far from satisfactory and the wait time was annoyingly long. Bob thoroughly understood the fact that happy employees’ yields happy customers, so he ensured that those who worked at the busy call centers had an improved working environment to boost their productivity and morale.

Bob also loved Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). He supported sustainable development goals (SDGs) that later earned him a position at the United Nations Global Compact Board, a voluntary United Nations (UN) initiative that encourages businesses globally to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies. As the Gender Champion for SBM Bank I was so priviledged to work closely with Bob under UN Women Empowerment Principles(WEPs) where he introduced me to Safaricom’s Women in Business (WIB) club where before his long illness we had ambitious goals of collaborating to lobby/advocate private multinational corporates to open up their supplier diversity opportunities for our business women that we bank. Bob was indeed a breath of fresh air, demystifying the notion that that in the technology space, all that is needed is technical skills to succeed but that soft skills that reside in the heart of a leader immensely increases productivity, a prerequisite to a thriving, sustainable and transformative company.

Another differentiating thing that I cherished so much about Bob was the fact that he was so down to earth and this opened him up to fun activities with people of all walks of life. When Safaricom was launching a mobile wallet for the Public Service Vehicles (PSV) popularly known in Kenya as Matatus, Bob wanted to engage so badly with the Matatu conductors and so he rode a few of those mini-buses and actually served by taking his turn being a bus conductor and all other mannerisms (The picture of Bob hanging on the bus door like Matatu conductors are notoriously known for and trying to imitate their unique  culture of whistling loudly haggling to call on passengers remains most hilarious in my mind). Talk about customer-centric engagement to the core. Bob went a step further, genuinely caring and engaging in the communities he served. No wonder every year when I would do the annual “Mater Hospital Heart Run” or “Step for Diabetes walk” to raise funds for marginalized vulnerable kids who have diabetes, I was 100% sure to see Bob participate like the rest of us. Mind you when ordinary CEOs attended such community events with large crowds of people, it’s easy to find them “hiding” at some VVIP corner with their fellow ordinary CEOs or hanging out with fellow diplomatic dignitaries having loud hearty VVIP conversations, but Bob was totally the opposite which was so phenomenal. As soon as he arrived, he would naturally mingle and walk around and have meaningful heart-to-heart conversations with fellow ordinary Kenyans as human beings and his heart loved especially the youths who equally adored his company and was a legendary role model to many to date. Bob appreciated deep down that everyone brings something valuable to the table regardless of their social-economic status, age, religion, ethnicity or their gender. He also did not mind getting his hands dirty at events be it planting trees or walking for a good cause. His colleagues who worked very closely with him and Industry players will tell you that Bob Collymore was a visionary leader. As Chief Executive he turned Safaricom into a global inspiration icon of how to get affordable connectivity and mobile banking to everyone, especially the highly-marginalized people in informal sectors majority who were previously highly unbanked, by way of mobile money wallet dubbed M-PESA (Swahili word for Mobile Money). He had a vision for a new kind of leadership. He was determined to inspire fellow leaders not only in East Africa, internationally and more specifically Bob was an inspirational highly revered transformational icon in the growing network of global CEOs who had realized that they must lead differently. Known for his famous ‘colored socks’, he lived as if he knew his life on earth was indeed extremely short and so gave his all, leaving behind such a rich legacy. Bob portrayed the same influence both at his work at Safaricom, society and with his fellow CEOs. Behind closed doors Bob understood the importance of mentorship and he was praised for inspiring fellow top-executives and his young Safaricom staff alike. Many of his mentees who are now thriving in executive leadership roles to date are forever grateful for the direct impact Bob had on their career and how he shaped their leadership styles.

The million-dollar question here remains? What lessons can we all learn from Bob Collymore and other leaders like myself who have mastered and understood the power of leading from the heart?

It all starts from deep within your heart folks through intentional self-leadership as someone once said, “We have mastered our minds, but there is a greater need to train our hearts. The world needs leaders who build value by leading from the heart and believe in connecting with people.” Commit to start leading from the heart today

According to the World Bank’s projection of the growth of the economy of Kenya, the economy of the country might grow by about 1.5% in 2020 due to the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time that this article was written, over 13,000 confirmed cases of COVID 19 had been reported in Kenya. Massive layoffs have been experienced in various sectors such as aviation and hospitality even as our economy slowly revs up following the easing of some of the preventative measures that have been put in place by the government to flatten the curve. 

It is against the backdrop of this grim reality that one needs to consider the emerging or existing investment opportunities. According to Margaret Kimani (a very seasoned investment banker by training who spent over 9 years in Wall Street in her early banking career in Boston Massachusetts) who currently Heads the Women and Youth Banking Unit at SBM Bank Kenya, investing now calls for a careful balance between taking a well-calculated risk and using a well-thought out diversification strategies. Margaret is such a firm optimistic believer in Albert Einstein’s popular saying that “Amid every crisis, lies great opportunity.” She believes that even in the middle of this devastating health crisis there still exists many investment opportunities. These opportunities are not only for individual Kenyan investors to invest locally (such as in Nairobi Stock Exchange and Treasury Bills instead of our past traditional overreliance on Foreign Investors to do so) but there is also room for our local SMEs to venture into investing their “sweat capital” in local businesses that never made sense in the past.  For instance, local manufacturers of PPEs and suppliers of locally-made health equipment stand a chance to grow significantly during this pandemic and reap off great returns from their investments.

Margaret was super excited and impressed by a recent article in the  Daily Nation on 15th July 2020 on the innovativeness of the Kenyan “Juakali” aka informal sector (https://www.nation.co.ke/kenya/news/two-artisans-to-supply-state-with-500-beds-1808070) which featured two of our very own “Juakali” sector artisans who had invested their youthful energy, innovation, and capital towards making hospital beds which are currently in high demand. The Government of Kenya has placed an order for 500 beds from these two young innovators. “This is a very significant moment for me as a Proud Kenyan citizen who believes that Kenya does not need aid. Instead, what we need is an enabling environment and continued support for our local innovators to manufacture locally and trade.” Ms. Margaret adds. At State Bank of Mauritius (SBM Bank), we are supporting Kenyan MSMEs and SMEs with such groundbreaking innovations to enable them weather this mega unprecedented crisis. SBM Bank provides the financial muscle and guidance that local Kenyan industries need to thrive during this pandemic and beyond. We have many success stories of young people within our wide network of 52 branches in the country. SBM Bank family takes pride in being “Merchants of Hope” as we continue to stay open to serve our esteemed customers. We have been able to restructure loan facilities for clients who are inspectors heavily affected by COVID-19 such as hotels and travel to protect their investments.

Common myths that guide investment decision sometimes lead to costly mistakes 

For some people, investing is like gambling, a myth that must be highly demystified. Based on this premise, their investing is usually guided by sheer luck, with little or no data to base their investment strategy and process. Such investors get easily excited by the “get-rich-quick” schemes reminiscent of the infamous quail business investment schemes that led to massive losses. The second most common myth revolves around the “crowd following” mentality. Some investors argue that the crowd cannot be wrong hence are guided by the popularity of a particular investment option. Peer pressure is not only limited to teenagers when it comes to investments. The problem with following the crowd mentality is that emotions are often the main guiding factor. Some investors are sadly still convinced that investments such as stocks are get-rich-quick schemes hence they are always on the lookout for quick speculative buys and quick sales that will make them quick profits. Investments need both time and patience just like planted tree seedlings so “microwave” overnight success is not guaranteed in the investment arena. Another common investment myth is that most people think you have to be a billionaire to start investing which is absolutely not true. In Kenya for example you can investing with as little as 3,000 Kenya shillings through the Nairobi Stock Exchange or Government Bonds through M-Akiba

Before you invest, particularly in this COVID 19 season, there are a few things to consider 

As with every journey, investment should be guided by clear goals. The goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely) with each goal having a specified time frame. After setting your investment goals, you can embark on working on them progressively. Before making any decision to invest, it is important to research various investment options available such as stocks, mutual funds, derivatives and treasury bonds. This should be done by strategically aligning one’s investment goals with their risk appetite, your current age as well as investment options available. The risks associated with each type of investment option should be clearly understood. Given the uncertainty associated with the COVID- 19 pandemic, investment options that are regulated by the regulator such as the Capital Markets Authority(CMA) in Kenya would be better than investment options that are either not properly registered nor regulated. This gives you recourse comfort as an investor in matters revolving around corporate governance of the company you are investing in.

Are there sectors that might survive and/or thrive during and beyond the COVID 19 crisis?

Fintech 

As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases continues to rise, the use of physical cash continues to be discouraged. The use of mobile money has been increasing as more people opt to use mobile money to purchase goods and services in what we in the banking sector are calling #GoCashless. In addition to this, there has been an increase in the use of online platforms to purchase essential goods and services. In Africa, Fintechs have shown much promise with over 50% of the over $1 billion that was raised as venture capital in 2019 within the continent being directed towards financial technology companies. As online lending and payment processing systems continue to grow, investing in this sector is bound to be profitable in the future. 

Digital Education 

The 2020 School learning calendar in Kenya has been suspended but this does not mean that online learning has been suspended in Kenya. The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) continues to offer learning materials for learners across the country through digital platforms. Eneza Education has partnered with Safaricom to offer the Kenyan government-accredited curriculum that is tailored for feature phones through Education Technology (EdTech).In my school days (which is just few years ago), classes were restricted to physical lectures, talks and physical objects; but our kids- students and teachers can now have access to a diverse range of  a digital toolbox that enables teachers to teach and students to receive online lessons and revision materials. It’s amazing what technology and innovation can do. In Tanzania, an online platform known as Ubongo Toolkits offers a large library of early childhood learning materials that cater for learners between the ages of 0 and 14 years. Investing in such EdTech driven companies can reap profitable returns in the new normal.

Health sector 

There are investment opportunities for the growth of digital solutions to aid in easing the current pressure on the overstretched health facilities in the country. Currently, several pharmaceutical applications enable patients to consult directly with doctors and pharmacists online, fill in their prescriptions online, and have their drugs delivered wherever they are. Most hospitals are currently allowing patients to have their prescriptions filled through digital platforms. The COVID 19 pandemic is not only revealing the weaknesses of the health care system in Kenya but also presenting opportunities that would be ideal for long term investors in the future. 

Agribusiness Sector & it’s Value Chains 

Even before COVID-19 pandemic hit food security and our food ecosystems faced glaring challenges. The Global Report on Food Crisis at the start of 2020 identified 135 million people worldwide as currently or imminently food-insecure. And recently according to the World Food Program (WFP) it estimates that an additional 130 million people could be pushed into hunger as a result of this crisis especially in the urban areas. Investing in food processing and sourcing companies even start ups in this sector will reap great returns because with or without the pandemic people under lock down got to eat. Firms such as flour mills, dairies, and vegetable and fruit processors are essential to ensuring that safe, nutritious food reaches all consumers, including the most vulnerable. Food processors for instance will play an important part of the economic recovery because of their linkages up and down the value chain, providing stable markets for smallholder farmers, aggregators and transporters, and jobs for women and men in economies where formal employment is scarce. Twiga Foods in Kenya is an example of a company to watch in this space. They have not only partnered with Sendy Transporters eliminating food wastages, reduce time taken to ferry food from Kenyan rural areas but have also leveraged Fintech companies such as Safaricom’s MPESA mobile payment platforms to cut off the expensive middle men who normally push up cost of food production.

Are the stock markets viable during the COVID 19 season and beyond the pandemic?

No one can predict with 100% certainty what the stock market will look like in the near future. The effects of the pandemic have been evident in the decline of the value of some of the stock prices, but this does not mean that this decline is permanent. A common approach to investing in stock can be summarized in Warren Buffet’s favorite quote “always buy low, sell high”. 

The opportunities presented by the current low stock prices ought to be evaluated carefully and a decision made based on data facts and figures. When investing in the stock market, a multi-layered approach is advisable. In such an unprecedented crisis, it is advisable to structure your investment strategy in the 4 bucketed approaches below: –

❖ Bargain basement bucket: These are blue-chip companies that will thrive in the current pandemic and beyond. The stocks in these companies are currently priced at unbelievable discounted prices e.g. travel companies such as Expedia.com and Booking.com 

❖ Safe stocks: These are companies whose products have been on high demand since the pandemic hit the globe e.g. Safaricom (data & home fibre) due to working from home following mandatory travel curfews & lock downs, Adobe and Amazon, Jumia and Twiga Foods 

❖ Distressed Bet buckets: These are investments that could potentially go under but have the potential of turning around beyond the pandemic. Examples include airlines such as Kenya Airways (KQ) once travel reopened & Government stimulus packages and PPE-Manufacturing companies 

❖ “Bet on behavior change” bucket: These are emerging companies whose stock price has risen as a result of the need for their products or services e.g. Instacart, Facebook, and Zoom Call…. now that the world has quickly moved online. The stock price of these companies has skyrocketed since March 2020 following this scary health crisis. 

❖ As you invest during the COVID 19 pandemic, remember that predictability of this market is impossible. Invest in thorough research, do your homework, and take a calculated moderate risk. After all, in finance, we say no pain no gain. There is nothing in this life that does not have a risk element associated with even living by itself has an element of a risk…won’t you agree?

Warren Buffett once said that it is wise for investors to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” This statement is somewhat of a contrarian view on stock markets and relates directly to the price of an asset: when others are greedy, prices typically boil over, and one should be cautious lest they overpay for any particular asset that subsequently leads to anemic returns. When others are fearful, it may present a good value buying opportunity. Since the price is what you pay, and value is what you get, paying too high a price can decimate your returns on investments. Happy investing folks! I can’t wait to read your stories on your road to successful returns on investments and remember you do have to have millions in your bank account to start investing, you can start investing with as little as KES 3,000 daily which is what most of us spend on a decent lunch meal. By investing in Kenya, remember you are also building a Better Kenya. Let’s do this.

On this particular Saturday I felt a crazy urge to plant more trees in our green huge compound that surrounded our gazebo area as well as outside the gate area and the drive through area. The “urban farmer on fire” in me did this quite often that our house staff were so used to it. The fact that I was nine months pregnant 5 days past due with our one and only first child did not matter or make this better. And when you are expectant for the first time in Kenya I guess it’s normal to get loads of unsolicited advice from other excited moms uummh isn’t?  I of course also strictly adhered to our gynecologist’s medical and health advisory. I was so determined to deliver the natural way with the hope of pushing the baby out without any surgical interventions-obviously because of my fear for those surgical needles and scissors since I was a little kid. I dread those jabs to date. So I did walk and swim often especially during the last trimester as they said it was a natural way of allowing the baby to descend downwards to the most preferred appropriate position ready for the delivery day process. And the adage is true that when a girl gets her mind into doing something she had better just do it. So right after breakfast I took my hot shower and got myself ready to go to the most-leafy tree planting nursery in our neighborhood. I drove past a few of them along Thika superhighway near the famous Blue Post Hotel right by the beautiful Thika River Falls until I settled for the one that had the most -healthy looking seedlings. At the time palm trees were so popular so we loaded up about 20 of those regular palms trees, Thika Palm trees mixed with few other flower seedlings.

I remember one of the lady nursery-owners who was used to my regular purchases who had seen me few times she asked me if I hadn’t delivered and I remembered smiling back at her and telling her that the baby hadn’t arrived. Mind you my weekly visit to the doctor’s office the previous week, the doctor had given me until that very week after which I would have to check into the hospital for the baby to be induced to actual delivery. So I paid for the seedlings, thanked the nursery owners they loaded up the trees into the trunk and off I left for our home. I got home so excited that I had managed to buy new fresh green baby trees which I figured if I planted on the same week that our first baby was supposed to be born they would be the same age with our baby and we would always remind the baby that she was born the same time those plants were planted. My ambitious self also contemplated that the “Wangare Mathaai” in me would somehow be able to convince my baby as she grew older the importance of taking care of trees, watering and nurturing them just like we would take care of her. In my world whenever I personally plant any tree those automatically become my newly acquired “babies” for me to care and nurture. After all they give us free fresh oxygen daily! Or don’t they? Trees just like our babies are to be nurtured with utmost tender care and never to be cut just anyhow. Speaking of which a few years back my arrogant neighbor cut few of my trees and this will be the last time he will ever cut a tree in our current neighborhood. I actually don’t get it why grown-ups cut trees and can’t water trees…and they are the least demanding of the ecosystem. All they require to grow is just some tilling, manures and water that’s it and there you have your daily dose of fresh oxygen free of charge!

            In my world it was a normal day we planted the trees, had lunch and then showered ready to relax as usual! Being a Saturday, I was gonna take it easy afterwards and rest anyway. My delivery bag was packed and stayed in the car since the 8^th month ready anytime. Since I had just officially started maternity leave, my house manager madam Akinyi knew my usual afternoon drill so she would check on me often to make sure I was alright. But as soon as I put my feet down in or living room downstairs to rest, very sharp pains started kicking my back. Having never experienced this before I had mixed reactions to the pain and didn’t know how to react but the one thing I was sure is that those are what our dramatic Lamaze training class trainer at Agakhan Hospital had described as contractions and is a sign that the baby was finally on the way out that day. The contractions were on and off for about 15 minutes then stopped and when we called the hospital they advised us to wait until we had real contractions and until I was dilated a few centimeters. Luckily the pain subsided then I went upstairs and took a siesta for a few hours. I woke up in the evening around 630pm and took a hot shower then when I got downstairs it’s like I awakened the sharper pains. The contractions now had gathered enough momentum and they were back this time with a more intensity. I could see loads of fear in my house manager’s eyes as she would come check on me as I perserved the on and off contractions. I guess at that point your mind goes elsewhere that you don’t even care or notice that you are screaming loudly when the pain comes in unexpected sharp unbelievable intensities out of this world. The one thing I knew is that the pain was still worth persevering no matter how sharp or scary because it was the only way the beautiful baby inside my belly would get out into this cruel world…and there were no short cuts about it. Also I kept reminding myself that others had gone through this painful delivery process before me in my family including my very own late mother who actually persevered it 8 times since we are eight of us. When my older sister Isabel delivered her first born son Ngugi in Pennsylvania (who now calls me “honey”) I was in her house throughout that period and I know that I wasn’t the first one neither would I be the last one to go through it. So this assurance gave me hope that it can’t get any worse and helped to turn my mind focus not on the sharp pains but I focused all my energies to the expected beautiful brand new innocent God’s creation replica of our very own image who would come into this world and so giving up was not a choice. Fear was not gonna be an option either!

Needless to say that I labored for a few longest hours of my life ever until around 9pm when now the pain was coming super sharp and furious that I couldn’t take it no more. I called my lovely friend Beth Manjie who lived not too far from us. Beth being the sweetheart she is always –she was also a bit scared and she requested her husband to accompany her to my house. My husband at that time had travelled-his business had a serious emergency that forced him to travel very early that same morning and he was meant to travel back that same day. So as soon as Beth and her husband arrived we quickly decided to drive straight to Agakhan Main Hospital along Limuru road where I had been booked for the main delivery. I don’t quite remember how our drive on the famous Thika superhighway and how long it took because I was in crazy super-duper pain but all I recall is just the way Beth took sweet care of me in the car preserving my dignity in the best way possible…you can imagine it’s not easy dealing with a screaming pregnant mother in pain –from screaming my mother’s name loudly to Jesus Christ to attempting to strip all my clothes to even almost pulling out my own hair. Those of you dads who have witnessed your wives’ give birth live am sure you feel me and for you mothers who have delivered before am sure you agree with me 100% uuummmhh? Beth held my hands tight, massaged it and squeeze them often gently every time one of those mega contractions kicked in as her husband Alias drove us safely. I also recall being received at the Agakhan emergency area and being wheeled into a wheelchair as I could not walk straight –my back yielded excruciating pains after laboring for those many hours before our little adorable baby girl Amani jetted into this world few hours past midnight. What is even more exciting and humbling is that with God’s help I was delivered by a midwife with the help of a Doula who helped me use special breathing techniques to help me push the baby out till the end. Truly when God sends you angels straight from heaven he sure does! Beth and Alias are those sweetest loving caring angels that I got at the time of extreme dire need. We are forever indebted to Beth’s family, the specific caring midwife (our heroine) at Agakhan and the patient Doula and we shall forever be grateful. By the time my husband finally landed into the hospital the baby was few minutes away from delivery which was also reassuring. By the time our gynecology returned hospital emergency calls the baby had already arrived! I will be lying to say that I was not scarred throughout the process especially when I walked into that delivery room full of screaming mothers.

            The delivery process set me on a journey of discovering why God bother to take his extra sweet time and so much pain in creating us and why he put us on earth in the first place. I mean why does the delivery process of each of us take so much time, pain and effort? If a woman can labor so badly for over 9 hours in addition to the 9 patient months including the 270 sacrificial pregnancy days of carrying the baby. Surely there got be a bigger reason why each one of us was born and it can’t be that we were put on this earth to just pass time and occupy free space and just live an ordinary life. Heck no! Our mothers did not incubate us 6480 hours for nothing!  Nor did they carry us for 388,800 seconds safely in their bellies in vain and the worst of all is the final 9 agonizing hours into the most painful delivery process for nothing! Instead am fully convinced that each one of was created for a divine purpose to become fearless influencers of society. This realization over the last 4 years has set me on an amazing fearless journey of not living in fear like I was first scared of what my baby delivery process would lead me to. I no longer let fear control me anymore nor stop me from becoming the Fearless Influencer that God wants me and has indeed called me to become. Had I continued to allow fear to control me from just hearing the different horror birth and pregnancy stories I would have easily thrown in the towel on the second or third month of my pregnancy which I can tell you is always very uncomfortable to bear. Of course I was very concerned especially about the unborn baby’s health in my belly! I was indeed fearful at times especially when the baby did not arrive at the expected date at the 9^th month but I did not succumb to these fears, I knew I had to persevere and deliver this baby come rain, come shine, come pain, come birth date delays no matter what…otherwise it would endanger the precious unborn baby’s entire life and my health and life would be at risk too. They say courage is not the absence of fear and it is indeed true. And just as scary the delivery process, may you to never let fear hold you back from becoming the Fearless Influencer that God has created you to be! Every time you are forced settle for anything less than your “fearless self” always remember my raw delivery experience story and may it remind you that just like any pregnant mother believes that we still have so much work to do as leaders and there is no giving in nor is there any room to give up halfway!

But the devil always lies in our ability and commitment in applying the same in our respective areas of influence. Folks, let’s not kid each other that by just reading this thought-provoking article that the fearless magic will automatically rub into you. I shared my own personal story and gave you this practical example to motivate you act on the knowledge that you will acquire here. Remember it’s not the quantity of knowledge we receive which matters but our ability to act on this new knowledge we acquire putting it into practical use in our respective lifes. The problem with many of us is that no matter how much knowledge we acquire, we fail to action it within the required in our very prime years of living and then we end up regretting when we are either so old to influence others which means we simply wasted down the drain our golden God-given opportunities to lead fearlessly by influencing others positively. Am super enthusiastic that you will not just simply fall in love with this article but you will act on the knowledge and insights gained here. Whether you have a very fancy title officially accorded to you or not, may you purpose to fearlessly lead and influence others to greatness so we can all make this world a better place for you and me!  Drop all your worries, fear and usual excuses! Be proactive, step up out of your comfort zone and awaken a stubborn commitment to see the world change by allowing ourselves to be that “fearless spark” especially for the new normal! Because if we don’t fearless influence now, then when? And if we don’t who will? If not you and i then who will? Every day is a chance to transform our lifes’ for the better so let’s do this shall we?  And for those of you who think that you have to be the late Nelson Mandera, Wangare Mathai or Mother Theresa to do this…. you got it absolutely twisted! I dare you to read on because the way I envision this is that we are all fearfully, uniquely and wonderfully made and so my goal here is to convince that you and I are the ordinary men and women that God is asking for us to arise now above our current circumstances to fearless change agents across every sector of society! And guess what God wants us just the way we are! You don’t have to a popular celebrity or a politician to do this! God is ready and will use you for his own Glory and Honor. Worry not and look no further because you are God’s official choose Ambassador! His grace and his unprecedented favor is and will be sufficient for this mission and you can take that guarantee to the bank for sure! I am counting on you and calling upon you to go back to your “roots”, your village, your community or neighborhood in whatever country you are in and begin to be this transformation journey of the exact change you want to see in your sector and country.

The few years God has blessed me to be in this planet, I have travelled the world and seen it all. But the one thing that seems to fascinate me is that I have found that everything seems to work out if you have your life in the right perspective; which in my world is God first, family second, and placing career or business third. I truly believe that career growth has come about because the first thing I did was to take God as my first partner. I don’t think it were not for God I would be where I am today. I believe God has blessed me because my motives and passionate motivation was right with God in the first place. He knows my heart desires and sees how much I want to see other Women and Youths of this nation become job creators and solution providers and innovators of our times to help create the Africa we want. I want them to become the beautiful creatures he created them to be and to also use their amazing God-given talents that lie deep down within each one of them. From my experience I have found that you must just do your very best, let go and just let God be by placing everything including your life in God’s hand then everything in your life goes right and you find so much peace that surpasses all human understanding regardless of your unique life circumstances. When you try to do everything alone relying on yourself, you indeed begin to make major blunders and make major errors that you might regret later on. Regardless of how genius one might feel always put God first because none of us have the crystal ball to accurately predict the future. When you put God first he most definitely gives you and your business unprecedented favor and sometimes it might seem that you have found success just because God has led us all the way through it all. Of course putting God first does not mean that you mean you become lazy and not have to work hard and plan, heck no…you must do your part then let God do his part. I cannot tell you how many times we have needed something greater than us including wanting God to open certain global business development doors for us to do expand the ease of doing business, only for us to see them miraculously open right in front of our eyes at our doorsteps.

Our experience with the regulator Central Bank of Kenya is one of them. In 2018 we decided that one of our key pillars we would offer was financial literacy education and trainings for our bank clients to help them become more bankable especially the micro and small business entrepreneurs. Few months later the Central Bank Governor issued a mandatory Kenyan Banking Charter requirement for all banks to entrench a responsible, disciplined culture which required banks to invest heavily in financial literacy with an aim to increase prudent lending practices by all commercial banks. Had we not made such a timely decision we could have incurred huge fines and extra costs setting up and facilitating such trainings. Indeed nobody can predict the future or even accurately knows what new regulations will be passed from time to time but God does. This has helped us to avoid a costly compliance challenge as well as allowed us to offer valuable customer education making us the “merchants of hope” to our clients. Even when the Corona Virus pandemic hit earlier this year, it was easy for us to transition from physical trainings to digital learning platforms which was a plus for us.  As much as I believe that God has been so instrumental in our business growth, I am very careful to remember that we are a business which represents every faith and denomination and I try not to “cut throat” preach to our people but instead I let my actions attract spiritually strong professions of integrity with solid professional work ethics who agree that God and family should be preeminent in their lives. Though I never impose my personal religious beliefs on anyone, I do let it known to them that God forms a very important part of my life. There comes a time when we must ask ourselves whether or not our lifes have been meaningful on earth or any rewarding. In Jeremiah 29: 11 the bible tells us that “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

I am also quite vocal regarding my strong belief in strong family ties. I always stress that no matter how successful you are in your career, if you lose your family in the process of attaining that success, then you will have failed. Of course I don’t advocate for abuse or domestic violence infact where it exists people should simply flee or walk away from it. Money is not worth sacrificing your family –a career or a business is a means not an end in itself. Unfortunately, some of us find ourselves so consumed with our work and businesses that we lose sight of what really matters most and what’s important in life. When our daughter Amani was born I had room for only three things: God, family and career. I had to forfeit going to the movies, reduce my business travels and hanging out with our friends as each of my waking hour was planned out around the children/family’s schedules and as a working mother I still need to make time to be with the baby, I thank God it was not for my high energy levels I would have collapsed by now. Our house managers and the close family members who have always surrounded us with the so much love and unwavering support they have always given their precious time which comes in very hardy in this career – family balancing act.

One of the things we enjoyed as family is travelling together and especially to the hot beachfront locations along beautiful coastal regions especially on weekends and during those school holidays. I am not a great swimmer but our daughter enjoys just soaking in the water and sunbathing any time any day. I would soak in the sun just watching her have a time of her life. She also likes flying and despite her autistic delayed speech very often she will remind us guys that it’s time to revisit the main international airport which is conveniently located about five minutes away from our house. Watching her play and enjoy herself is a choice for me and I do it gracefully without any complains. I use that time to unwind and meditate over my life otherwise my life just rotates around the three priorities for a while. Though I run a very demanding work schedule I am always there for my daughter and my family anytime they needed me.  I always avail myself to help with extra curriculum activities as well help with her homework and all doctors’ appointments. I recently witnessed my daughter loose her milk teeth myself and there no better joy than her knowing that we shall always be there for her no matter our busy schedules. This is why I am very vocal and passionate about promoting diversity and inclusion both in the community and at the workplace…which is great as it encourages valuing everyone at the workplace regardless of their diverse circumstances including people living with disabilities (PWDs)

Great employers need to seriously consider and understand that children are any sober parent’s top priorities. You find at times people go to work when they have a super sick child at home which makes them very unproductive the rest of the day as you can imagine there is no loving parent who can keep their minds focused fully at work soberly when at the same time when worried about their sick child at home. In my opinion, the employer would be better off telling them to stay home for the day so as to take care of their child so that the next day they can come to work and contribute productively to their work obligations in the office. For us women it’s worse because your responsibilities extend to caring for other family members such as aging parents and siblings with various needs. I recall when our daughter was only two years old she had a forced ear surgery which I was scared to death about till today. Right after the surgery she had to go for over 6 months’ sensory integration therapies which required my presence at least twice a week as her ear-nose-throat (ENT) was very delicate. My employer was very understanding and they allowed me attend to her as long as my care did not compromise my work performance so I would wake up very early drop the baby off to therapy sessions then drop her off to her kindergarten then rush off to my office and catch up with day’s work load without fail even if it meant working late for those 2 days i had to do it for my child’s sake. I am so grateful to have blessed to work for organizations that allow me to exercise such a bold philosophy. I can attest that when you put God first, your family second and your career/business third, everything seems to work out. Out of that order, nothing much seems to be sustainable. You might get to enjoy your bottom line for a while but it doesn’t matter how much money you make or how big of a house you have built or how many cars you own in your packing lot, we must ask ourselves if our lives have been meaningful and impactful on this earth.

Many of us were sadly cultured to think that competition is a negative vice to have! Part of it is due to our bringing up and the conditions under which we found ourselves growing up under. If you grew up in a family of eight you know that you for instance needed to stay competitive and be on top of your game, otherwise when Christmas season approached you might never receive any gifts from your parents because perhaps throughout the year you did not give them a good enough reason as to why they needed to invest their already scarce resources. Growing up, my late mother who was most definitely one of my all-time mentor and role model constantly never failed a day to remind me, “anything anyone else can do, you can it better than them.” Mind you this included washing dishes after every meal…and all the house chores you can think of –which many of us are not a big fan of! Of course after hearing this more than enough times, I was fully convinced that I could most definitely do better and improve on the way things were generally done by others. I think this explains part of my personality of always looking to improve anything I come across be it life, work, health, family lifestyles and livelihoods. Like this was not good enough, when I got to school my primary teachers right in our then mandatory morning parades also reminded us “always leave a place better than you found it” (It makes me wonder if the guys who went to the “group of schools” had such mandatory morning drills and parades like we did…. wink wink –not to mention that some of us did not go to kindergarten…such luxuries did not exist in our family of 8 children…. i came to learn later on in life that children actually needed to go to such places but unfortunately I was already in University). The more I listened to my parents and my teachers who did a pretty good job as it, i wondered if mother nature had conspired towards this “do it better” agenda. As much as my parents were not so privileged to acquire much education due to their humble background (poverty) I will be the first one to admit that they were my first and best teachers and still remain the best teachers to date. Though my mother passed on in 2003, my father still remains my number one investment advisor to do date,

In my parent’s eyes, the surest way they expected for me to prove that I got their teaching was by me getting straight As in my primary school. B and C grades were not something we were to sit down and negotiate with my parents because such grades were not good enough. Being a forth born in this family of very competitive children-and especially my very bright most intelligent sister Isabel –being my immediate sister that I followed in line who was exactly 2 years older than me -I had no choice but to style up and do whatever it took for me to get those A grades. If it meant studying all night with the “paraffin lantern light” as you know by now we did not have electricity nor solar lighting privileges in our village. This village girl came to see and enjoy Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) products when I finished high school during the gap year. Anyhow I did not want to let down my parents or myself, and so I worked extra hard in school to achieve these goals and I always came out amongst the top students in my class. This included being the best- behaved most disciplined student in class. But sadly as I worked extremely hard to bring best grades home I found that competition was real and doing my very best became my daily goal!

Those days, in my mind I never thought in terms of “beating” the other students, all I really wanted was to make my sweet amazing parents proud by making bettering my own academic achievements, and make them more motivated to work extra hard to look for my school fees every term. Soon therefore it became mission critical necessary for me to excel in everything I touched or did. Yes I simply wanted to wash dishes the best way I knew how and in our village milking the cows, washing your younger siblings and baby-sitting them all day, washing clothes and school uniform, cleaning the house, plucking tea and coffee during the school holidays were ordinary chore for us to engage in competitively without complaining! I know in other countries where I have been privileged to live and visit these particular chores would be considered “illegal child labor” but hey….in our household helping your parents in the farm was a tall order and all were schooled on how to do it from a very tender age… and we had fun doing it ….otherwise how and where did we expect school fees to come from at the end of the school holidays and mind you small scale farming was my parents only source of income for all eight of us? And sure enough I would pluck the most tea, coffee and though I was the youngest I was the fastest in doing it. You can only imagine how i became my parents’ darling if not their favorite child with my can-do attitude.

Later on as I grew older and progressed through my banking career abroad, this same competitive spirit that my parents had instilled in me kept me going even through difficult days juggling between part time “self -sponsored” school especially in the rough Boston winters when I wanted to quit school so badly.  With every challenge my mind always focused more upon competing with myself. I came to realize that competition can be a very strong motivator, but more importantly for me I have learnt that a competitive spirit becomes the most powerful weapon when you deliberately compete with yourself and learn from your past failures.  I remember when State Street Bank gave me an entry level job opportunity where I started out as a data entry clerk, I ended up being the best in it. I would never leave the office until all the work was done unlike my colleagues who would simply clock in at 8 am and clock out at exactly 5pm! Every week I made sure that we processed more data entries than any other bank unit. I simply wanted to do and achieve more and true to my mother’s words I desired to “leave the unit better than I had found it”. I was also more willing to make more sacrifices and work harder and pay the price for that success. I guess having plucked coffee and tea during school holidays made my work ethics very different from what the rest of bank’s data entry clerks did…which most definitely caught my bosses attention and this is how I moved up the corporate America banking ladder purely by merit. I was successful in my banking career not because I was any extra ordinary nor more talented than the next data entry clerk initially but just because I was willing to go the extra mile and make more sacrifices to make things better than I found them. Whenever the bank was rolling out new projects or any new initiatives, I was always the first “dare devil” staff to volunteer my services and expertise which was an awesome experience for me having come from the so called “jungle”. This “can-do” spirit really exposed me to very rare but golden opportunities where I was able learn very sophisticated technology and banking instruments putting me at a superior advantage as opposed to the peers some who had worked with State Street Bank for years. I remember once the Head of Human resources after a heated debate with the Board the bank noticed that their crème-della crème staff were being porched by competitor organizations in the market such as Merill Lynch and Brown Brothers and the bank wanted to kick start a project towards Career Development and Talent Retention for the entire bank. And guess who was the first one to volunteer when that HR recruitment email went out? You know it! Yours truly me. So I applied and they took me in. Mind you I was a few years old in my data entry job in wealth management services department but here I was luckily paired in a team which comprised of Presidents of huge divisions in the bank with hundreds of employees and Chief Officers whom I all over sudden starting sharing same board rooms and discussing with and building innovative ideas around how we can stop the staff poaching menace and how to motivate our staff to stay with the bank through different career development work streams. All over sudden people in other departments and other bank divisions, started noticing me through the work I was championing in the bank and few times i was recommended for positions that were available in other departments without me knowing it. The bank even went an extra mile to allocate me a peer senior mentor to accelerate my banking career growth path. Something was different in how I simply did my work. All over sudden i started getting recognitions for my commendable work ethics. rubbing shoulders with Senior Bank management and the rest was history. I look back today and am forever grateful my “can-do” spirit and above all has been gracious to me.

Of course I did not always win nor always reach audacious my goals. For instance, one of my goals was to fly my sweet mother and father to Boston Massachusetts from my beautiful Kenya just for them to witness my 2^nd degrees’ graduation ceremony …this dream failed miserably because unfortunately my mother suddenly passed on in Sept 2003 to a so called “mild stroke”. This to date still remains like a surreal movie especially when I received that dreaded call from my mother’s brother – uncle Ndungu…but nevertheless my mother had fortunately taught me how to lose. She did so by encouraging to always look to the future with courage and hope by doing better the next time I have an opportunity to do so and to try harder the next day. I think it’s very important for us successful people to keep reminding our youths who are so carried away by instant gratification who I often refer to as the “microwave generation” to learn that you can’t win them all. It is simply impossible to always win or be the best the 100% best all the time because we are human beings. As a young parent myself nowadays I see parents pushing their children to win (as often as they win in some major league championships) even when they have not practiced enough. My only prayer is that someone is also teaching these youngsters how to accept defeat in equal measure. Because anyone who competes has to face defeat at some point in life and learn how to rub your dust off your shoulders, pick up your pieces and move on in life. It’s so true sometimes even as competitive we can be we must allow ourselves to learn from our mistakes and sometimes learn from past failures fast. Whichever the case you must the can-do attitude helps to believe that you shall overcome if you stay focused.

 Successful competitive people are never afraid to try, because they are never afraid to fail. I have often told my mentees, “if we ever decided to compare knees, you will most definitely find that I have many scars more than anyone else in the room anyday. Why? This is obviously because in this journey called life I have personally fallen down many times and gotten up as many times too.” And yes the Margaret Kimani you see now was not always set on fire throughout her life. I have been molded to the person I have become today as a result of many disappointments, many heart aches and plenty of set-backs. And this is why I believe with all my heart that you can be anything you want to become in this world but yes you must be willing to pay a price. Throughout my childhood and professional career journey I knew that in-order to get something, i had to give up something else…. i personally don’t believe in hand outs and never will! When I was student for instance I knew so well that since I was not as sharp as my sister Isabel I had to give up extra three hours of sleep or more so I could do extra study. Unlike my sister who was born a genius and did not need to study much…for her once the teacher taught in class she grasped 96% of the concept. As a young career mom parenting for me means giving up lots of my previous very social life and fun to just spend the  extra  quality time to my young family. There will be never enough hours in a day to work and take care of the family time but I have never resented these sacrifices. I always want to support my family well, live in a nicer house, go to the best schools, travel to the best vacation destinations and move into a nicer neighborhood and knew each of these goals had a price to pay. So the can do competitive spirit is what has always pushed me to do more to achieve more making me feel that the price was worth it.

Competing and striving to excel can be a lot of fun! Encouragement from my mother, father and my teachers was extremely important to me because when I look back at my childhood struggles, I suspect that having been a forth born in a family of eight had the biggest influence on my competitive spirit and following my sister Isabel who was so competitive that I had no choice but the very best. When we were children I recall we never had school transport back and from school. Some lucky days when my busy father would graciously drop us off to school in the morning in the legendary blue canter KTS 488 which he still possesses until date and this car still looks as good as new. But now this meant that every day as we walked to school I had no choice but to catch up with my sister’s hasty strides walking to school and had no choice to fall behind on the road or fail to walk to school and be on time for the mandatory school parade. Now I realize that having Isabel ahead of me as an older sister, my role model and my friend exposed me to an exciting new competitive world. Subconsciously, I must have recognized that I could earn a place in such a world if I were only willing to work for it. The beauty is that Isabel and I willingly shared everything and neither of us felt envy for the other. Because of the age difference with my sister, I felt that I needed to strive to keep up with her speed. I had to learn many things to keep up and somehow I guess I was afraid that if I didn’t do well or know as much, Isabel wouldn’t be my friend or even to be around me, Thanks heaven that thought never crossed her mind and she accommodated me just the way I was.

By the time I reached university, my competitive spirit was so deep rooted. I continued to flourish in my grades. Unlike my peers, I decided to finish my campus studies in three years rather than the normal four years which was a big bet as I knew affording the fees for my parents was a really serious struggle. But somehow by God’s grace my can-do spirit successfully managed to convince my father that enrolling in the accelerated summer classes at Kenyatta University would end up saving us more money than the 4 years which was such a blessing in disguise for me as I got to graduate a year earlier than my peers. This said and done I am fully convinced that the best productive competitive spirit is when you make a deliberate choice of simply competing with yourself which simply means you work day and night towards becoming the better version of your yesterday’s version and beat your own past records to become a better human being.  I have come to cherish this golden principle that a person competes best when he or she competes against herself or himself which really means that everyone really has a chance to victory otherwise it becomes impossible to motivate or teach people who are at each other’s throats. This is what motivated me to start Nduta Angels Foundation years back which believes that “No child should be left behind” and the beauty is that every day I see many young children’s hopes and dreams come to realities. Some of the young people whom we met and mentored at a very young age have made drastic decisions to become competitive by creating tangible solutions that are solving real problems and have now even graduated and made promising careers for themselves and are now married with families and thriving in life. In my own personal life and career path, my competitive spirit has seen me seconded for positions both here and abroad innocently even now while I am busy minding my business doing what I do best daily. The beautiful part is that as an agent of change, i now see dreams come true for other women in business and for youths in our society which gives me so much joy and satisfaction. The competitive can-do spirit is so rewarding especially when you purpose to create needed valuable solutions instead of competing with others “cut throat”.

I will be the first person to admit that if I was born in the United States of America I would by now have been diagnosed with the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) syndrome because I am not only a detailed-freak but am I can also be a perfectionist! Oh my gosh this reminds me of us growing up as a 4^th born in a family of 8 kids, how much I used to fight with my kid brother Samuel when he would come home from primary school and just carelessly dump (if not throw) his dirty school bag into our living room couches and needless to say how much this used to “tick me” off! I mean the thought of him just dumping his dirty bag into the sofa set (as we used to call them then) used to get the better part of me….let alone seeing him do it. I remember the “cat fights” that used to be in that house before our late sweet mother Nduta would come home from her regular evening church prayers only to find us up-and arms with each other! She would just quietly watch us fight and then walk into the house and her stare was good enough to set us both into a peacemaking -building bridge initiative (bbi) mode….or else the “spanking” that would follow after supper was close to World War II and when dad came home late the same night he would still beat the crap out of us again – once mom reported it upon dad’s arrival. The more I grow older I have come to realize that my perfectionism growing up was both a strength but it also served as a weakness in certain areas.  My thinking then was that if my brother Samuel (who is now a cleaner freak than I am and an all grown well season electrical engineer and married with such a cute lovely family) could understand me then was that the way you do the smallest things (such as neatly storing his school bag) said a lot about the way he will do the bigger things!

Needless to say that today Samuel and I are sweetest best of friends but my past relationship with this particular sweet brother of mine always reminded me of a popular saying by Timi Nadela that says “Don’t be afraid to shine,the world needs your light.” By becoming the very best version of yourself means that you are going to move away from where you are, so you must be willing to shred your old self. When you raise your own bar high, you essentially create a gap between you and people around you. The good bible tells me that to all of us God has given us our own “kind of light” which he granted each of us free of charge. So when we allow ourselves to settle for less or even worse when those guilt feelings kick in they dim our God given natural light. Instead of dimming our lights to make others feel more comfortable like my brother Samuel then, we should simply just continue to “shine our shine” and foster the rise of the vibrations of those around us. Being happy and feeling good does not always mean that you have no compassion for the misery of those around you. It simply means you won’t dim your light nor settle for less just to make those around you feel comfortable – instead, you’re going to help them light their paths using your brighter light. And yes at first, your light may be a bit too bright for others and it may hurt their eyes, yet it’s far better to shine rather than to hide your light. When you hide your lit candle for too long what happens? The candle’s light extinguishes and you slip right back into blackout pitch black darkness…unable to find your way until someone “shiny” comes along to light your way and help you to find the light you still possess within which is your soul’s magnificence. I know this is not always very easy to do but I strongly believe and urge us all to boldly learn to shine your God-given light all the way because life indeed is too short to live dull-dimmed regretful life as a “people-pleaser”; the way social media digital boom is teaching many of our millenials to do. From my personal experience, what has helped me to keep my light bright is by first being intentional about filling my heart with joy, peace, unconditional love, awesome real life experiences, things that am passionate about which tickles my fantasy and my interests (such as fun travelling with family,mentoring youths and my love for mother nature-organic gardening) with positive inspirations available to me in my universe.

Here are few things you can do daily to be the “Best version of You” eliminating toxic clap out of your life:-

1. Practice gratitude attitude – This is one of my favorite routine that I have been practicing for years. Every morning when i wake up when I am taking my nice “wake me up” hot shower i verbally count at least 5 things that am grateful about for that very day and top of that list is always life by itself, good health that I have enjoyed for all these few decades I have existed in this planet (by the way I have never had surgery and I always verbally remind my maker that I do not take it lightly nor for granted) I count the majestic beauty that God has blessed me with( honestly you will all agree I am indeed very beautiful but wait till you meet my gorgeous sisters and brothers…it’s true generally our family my dad and late mother Nduta were super blessed with some of the most beautiful genes the world had to offer and I tend to think that God for sure took his extra sweet time to create our sweet family of 8 (true story)…but the most important things that I pray to God for is that he has use our beauty to glorify himself in all we do. I can go on and on about my daily long gratitude list such as the unconditional family love that am so blessed to enjoy in my life. I think by now you get the point the whole idea behind daily practicing gratitude is that you when you have a grateful heart, you naturally tend to “spark and attract” the universe to act to your favor to bring more things into your life that you are grateful for (this is the exact opposite for the nagging complainers who always see and have their “glass forever half empty”. Gratitude makes you feel much happier as a person and keeps your light shining brighter. Over the years I have perfected this gratitude ritual so much that in January 2018, my friend Rachel Ray challenged us to keep a “Gratitude jar” which at first I was quite hesitant to do –I thought to myself “I already have a tight crazy busy schedule” But guess what? We have come to absolutely love it. So daily in the evening in our dining table before we do our dinner prayers, we each write 5 things in the “yellow sticky post-it notes” on what we are grateful about and then we put these yellow notes inside the gratitude jar. The sweetest thing about writing down and savings these gratitude yellow shiny post-it notes is that anytime we are feeling down or a bit stuck in something, we just pull out one of the post-it notes and read it aloud to each other. In our house we call this gratitude jar “the magic jar of awesomeness”. We have one sitting in the kitchen downstairs right next to microwave and I have a tiny one sitting upstairs inside my makeup dresser. Try it folks and by the way you don’t need to buy these jars, come on guys just be like us be creative…improvise those biscuits, cookie or soap jars that is what we have been using. When our daughter Princess Amani turns 6 years we plan to have her keep her own gratitude jar which is dated…and of course we hope that we shall be top in her daily gratitude list…oh yes very funny but it’s every parents dream, wont you parents agree?
2. Never allow anger to consume your time any day? A joke is told how in America people simply just cut you off on the road and then instead of being apologetic about it, they top up your escalating anger by either “giving you the middle finger signal” or curse you out with the “f-word”. Trust you me as person who learnt driving myself the hardest way in America –as I walked into a show room bought my first purple Ford probe sports car and there was no one to drive it home for me and mind you that morning i was heading to work for my then 3 pm shift. Let’s just say that it’s by God’s mercies and miracle that I somewhat made it to work and home sweating furiously but alive … other drivers were honking and cursing my slow driving pace not knowing i was as frightened driving for the first time as hell. And hey my home country Kenya is no better in this road rage arena, you need full grace to drive due to some of the notorious bus and “matatu” drivers on the roads. By the way when I relocated back home I was so traumatized to self drive in Kenya that at first I even thought I was sick. But hey after a few months of taking taxis and knowing that I am not the most patient person, I had no choice but to learn to drive myself. Of course, we are human beings and it’s inevitable that we often feel angry from time to time, but we don’t have to let it control us and our emotions. I kid you not guys, working through my lack of patience, my unapologetic hate for mediocrity, my anger towards corruption which continues to rob millions of resources to innocent people, lifes, and my circumstances was one of the toughest things I have had to deal with but it has been the most beneficial to me. Taking the life transforming 10 weeks Mizizi Course in 2019 (Thanks to Mavuno Church visionaries) helped me a great deal to unlearn some of my impatient escapades and I also had to deliberately self-teach how to take deep breaths which has worked for me-saving me negative energy that I absolutely do not need in my life. Please try it too and hope you find this helpful, thank me later. I look back and laugh because people that I might have yelled at in my past “impatient” life when they meet me nowadays they wonder “who are you and what changed about you?”, Goodness me I recall this one episode after receiving the most horrible don’t care customer service for over 5 years in one of local oldest banks while I was I lived in the Diaspora, one time when I showed up in person in their head office in Nairobi with my sweet brother Jay…I almost closed the entire branch. You know at that time, I could not understand how a customer writes a transactional email request and it would take a whole bank 60+ days to respond and mind you they only responded only after you have sent over 10 email reminders and used up over $100 on International calls which you would go to a switchboard then you patiently wait to be transferred to those “ghost workers” which used to really get the best of “my zero-patience” then boiling. I thank God for his grace that I am a changed person- very peaceful and more patient with others indeed. So take it from me folks, never allow yourself to get angry at any given day, It’s not only dims you light but it also produces bad hormones that are toxic to your health! And guess what nowadays when a rude arrogant drivers cuts me on the road, i just roll up my window down and illuminate most gorgeous killer-smile (which would never happened in a million years before) and most often the offender always respond with such a guilty apologetic facial expression and life goes on…nothing ticks me off.
3. Build a “feel good” crew around you and spend quality time with those that matter most to you! For me top of this list is obviously my loving family, our baby (the one and only sweetest preciously adorable soul -Princess Amani who totally gets it)  and our close family friends who not only challenge me, lift me up and inspire me to live my best life now. Here I want to urge you all to run away if not flee from toxic negative people in your life with zero apologies! Nobody got time for that? Why waste your precious time with such “poison ivy” producing people, get unnecessary toxicity out of your life! Surround yourself with people that bring the absolute best out of you,who challenge you using constructive criticism and who help you keep shining your light even brighter.
4. Practice Essentialism and Prioritize: if you don’t prioritize your life somebody else and something else will creeps in like weeds in your green garden and your life becomes so meaningless. You become so frustrated, unfulfilled and less motivated. Start your day by writing down the 3 most important things you have to do for the day that will make the largest impact in what you do. Personally I prefer to actually take a piece of paper and write down because somehow whatever i personally write down is my personal commitment to get it done, if I don’t write it down you can be a 100% sure that it won’t get done (true story). Yes I know I am very digital, innovative and I am also an early adopter to all things technology but this writing down ritual i guess it’s just how my brain is specially wired and since it works for me I am not about to change this good habit. Writing down in the morning and checking off the 3 things accomplished that day for me visually and physically helps me to “cut out the noise” and the many demanding competing forces that compete for my very limited time during the day and it helps me to prioritize what actually needs and what gets my attention and what does not. I am also a firm believer in empowering those around and below me to effectively and efficiently do what is needed even in my absence especially those who report to me such that I do not have to attend every single meeting…I believe there is no monopoly of knowledge and sharing is indeed caring. Micromanaging can never be my portion and I believe delegating non-decision making tasks is essential if you want to enjoy essentialism and abundance as there is enough work for everyone. I apply the same skill in our house, my house manager (nanny) does not have to call me every day to ask me what she has to cook in the dinner menu…we have empowered enough to make those decisions herself. For those of you who know my calling in mentorship that I practice the same theory and one of the requirement for me to mentor anyone especially the Youths is that once they benefit from my mentorship I expect them to go back to wherever school, village or country they come and in return mentor someone one else at bear minimum….this is what life is all about- just pass on the knowledge so there is enough abundance in the world.
5. Don’t sweat the small stuff and keep your eyes on the ball,don’t loose the bigger picture simply put when life throws lemons at you and you run into tough rough situations, often times it will seem like a disaster, instead of panicking, ask yourself, will this matter in the next 10 days? 10 months? 10 years? Chances are it wont, so quit wasting your precious energy in time wasting stuff which not only dims your light but adds no value to your life!
6. Don’t get stuck on a bad yesterday? I can tell you for free that you will not shine your shine or be a better person today if you are stuck on your bad yesterday. Dwelling on a bad yesterday only makes your today equally bad as well. The sum total produces two bad days in a row —a bad yesterday and a bad today, and a bad today would be a bad yesterday the next day for sure. So for me I try to forget and forgive nasty demeaning remarks made by a selfish boss full of ego, a jealous colleague, a mean neighbor, or even my spouse. I also stopped regretting mistakes I might have made to help me move on. I have learnt over the years to stop thinking of time wasted in past bad toxic relationships since I realized that thinking about them now wastes my time today and drives negative emotions so i urge you too to let go any past resentments.
7. Be a student for life – purpose to learn something new every day even if it’s something as small as a new habit (wink wink yes a new habit), a new words in a different language, a new life skill or new insights to something you have been doing. As an investment banker as seasoned as I am I am always reading widely of world trends and checking in on what my fellow bankers are doing differently, what new trends are coming up. I am very open mind to learn and improve. Push yourself to grow every single day folks and bring others along with you as you grow. For example, tonight I was e-mentoring some unemployed Kenyan youths and I got to learn so many things in return from the questions they asked, needs arising from unemployment space. My cohost Mr SK Blue being a very seasoned madly gifted creative, TV Producer who is also a serial entrepreneur – i learned so much about the entertainment industry…i remember writing my notes fast and furious. The thing thing that hinders us many of you from learning and bettering your lifes daily is your big ego, know-it-all- mentality,pride and lack of humility which you must tame first or unlearn and replace them with a new skill! If you improved just a little bit every single day, think of how that effect compounds over even a year? When you stop learning, you not only “slowly kill your brain cells” but you actually stop shining your shine making life so boring- not exciting as its meant to be. Currently am learning how to skip the rope and play soccer -thanks to our 5 year old daughter who am teaching how to do it so I have got no choice but to learn (though as many of you know i am big American Football fanatic- New England Patriots is my die-heart team) and we have so much fun goofing around every day practicing soccer(yes not football).
8. Work out daily and get enough sleep– It’s scientifically proven that nothing fires up the brains like play and exercise. It is healthy, keeps us fresh, innovative, and makes us more receptive to untested creative unique ideas. Find a fun sport or an exercise routine that tickles your fantasy. I know for me I mostly prefer working out in the evening especially that nice relaxing run or jog under the moon and yes the stars shining bright up in the sky. It’s so therapeutic and you get to catch up with your inner self,meditate,count your blessings and wind down your forever busy body systems especially if you are a high energy person like me…this works magic for me.  I aim to run 3-5 miles a day followed by circuit training but am obviously not perfect, but on the days that I do it,its an awesome feeling like a baby super rejuvenated. Before Corona Virus pandemic I used to religiously go for an hour of Zumba classes every Thursday evening, and since I love dancing so much this has a way of just bringing out my happy hormones out of me in a sweet fun way I can’t explain. Daily exercise is a very simple but a very effective discipline. I envy people who exercise early in the morning as your energy levels are much better for the rest of the day and it’s good for health. Speaking of good morning habits…please make sure you do not deprive yourself sleep. Sleep indeed affects our judgment and our self awareness. I notice that the days I don’t sleep enough-the more non-essential things ends up clipping into my life. For instance the days I have had to catch very early flights or when our princess was much younger and I had to be up all night when she was unwell, during the day to stay awake and sane I had to drink extra cups of caffeine products to function during the day…which is quite no healthy!
9. Watch a thought leader on Youtube daily or daily if possible– or if you are like me listen to awesome music that makes your heart pump the right happy vibrations out if you know what i mean. A lot of my friends and gurus recommend reading every day to learn. I like reading, but I tend to learn better through audio visuals. So every morning when I get into the car the first 20 minutes of my drive I do my “quiet time”(QT) and prayers aloud as I drive (yes yes weird i know and of course with eyes open)then the next 10 minutes I turn on my Audio bible on my phone and listen to it for God’s wisdom first before the day’s noise kicks in (even before i get into the many what’s app messages or emails )which keeps me sane as the wisest man on earth King Solomon wrote in Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom but the fools despise wisdom and instructions.” Then the remaining time of my morning drive on a good day, I intentionally listen to a thought leader (or at least watch if there are traffic jams) discussing their life lessons and insights on Youtube on different topics –especially motivational thought provoking inspirational short videos. I find it to be a great way to supplement my learning as you recall “student for life by choice” is my second name. Learning is intentional for me and never ends. It will only end when I exit the earth but am sure in heaven the angels too will show us a few loops of how to shine our shine up there (wink wink)

So my friends, please quite fitting in and simply shine your God-given natural shine. I am also very intentional about never allowing any rejection, criticism, fears, negativity & disquietude cloud my soul to successfully survive all the storms with my “can-do” belief, with my optimism, wit and grit. I know there has been many recent heated debates on what’s the difference is between essentialism and minimalism but for me I look at minimalism as getting rid of stuff that clutter your head, mind, cut your fad which stresses you out, while essentialism is more about living with as little as possible. Please keep in mind that people look at the two differently and there’s not really any wrong or right answer so do you and never focus so much on the words or their definitions, but rather what you actually want to do to get the best version of the real you. Make your own choices. Always allow your thoughts, your natural flowing goodness and your deeds continue to encourage, inspire others, empower everyone around you to also experience if not taste lots of unconditional love, hope, peace, abundance of joy that overflows in your world.  Those of you who have been privileged to be around me and especially my family, my close buddies and work colleagues always say that “there is never a dull moment with MWK” and as you all know by now my passion and my enthusiasm about life itself is obviously undeniably contagious! You cannot hold me down. I urge us all to unapologetically let your colors, your majestic magic and your light continue to stream into this world that is so increasingly becoming isolated and rather cruel. Let your brightest joys illuminate your path today and let your journey bring you closer to your cherished aspirations. Never think of yourself like a crescent moon, waiting for someone else to fill up the missing part of your full moon! Heck No!  When you stand alone like a full moon, already complete in yourself, you will meet other people who are whole and complete just like you are and between you two, a  healthy relationship will not only grow but it will illuminate other dull people along the way (funny enough i see this concept backfire especially when people are dating and someone eventually gets hurt for trying to fit in or even worse dimming your light to be loved or liked by a potential dating partner). Never try to settle for less or fit yourselves to others’ set standards just to make your crescent moon full. Instead, be more like two full moons shining brighter. What this does is that you end up respecting each other’s unique individuality more that comes with your own individual special light and different interests while creating a relationship in which each of you shines brightly on the other making life more exciting. So my friends love deeply, be successful, blessed, stay safe most importantly keep shining your light bright like a Diamond.