Alana is a Senior Design Manager on Dynamics 365 Customer Voice. With 8 years of Microsoft Design experience across Visual Studio, Power BI, Power Apps, and Forms Pro, Alana is responsible for leading and delivering the user experience of the product. Alana cares deeply about creating delightful, streamlined experiences. Creating inclusive spaces, teams, and experiences is a passion of hers, where everyone adds to the culture, rather than needing to fit in.
Wilkista is a renewable energy specialist with over six years’ professional experience in Sub Saharan Africa renewable energy markets focusing on; design and supply of solar systems, clean energy advisory, lobby and advocacy for green and inclusive energy policies at local, national, and regional levels. Her professional interests are largely in renewable energy technologies, power optimization in electricity markets, energy efficiency, predictive modelling and analytics, and more recently Power-to-X technologies.
Away from work, Wilkista is passionate about mentorship and the empowerment of young women and youth. She mentors younger women particularly those aspiring to pursue STEM or just getting started in their careers. Having been a beneficiary of the Global Give Back Circle, she leveraged on the experience and skills to co-found and run the Kakenya Centre for Excellence mentorship (KCE) program for 7 years. The program has over the years connected teenage girls in the Maasai community’s Enoosaen village with university and college female students as their mentors, among other life-skill workshops. In 2020, the program was handed over, as part of a sustainability strategy, to KCE beneficiaries who are now in college. Wilkista is also an environmental sustainability champion.
Edna is an international development professional with multicultural experience in adolescent and youth development programs. She has gathered mentoring experience in the past seven years through various roles; Edna is a mentoring advisory member of YouthPower2 by USAID, a mentor at the MasterCard Foundation Scholars program, the Kakenya Centre of Excellence, and at her former high school-Starehe Girls Centre in Kenya.
Previously in 2015, Edna leveraged her expertise in the design and implementation of a mentorship program for the Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI) Regional Leadership Center East Africa, where she is also an alumnus. She helped design the strategy and recruited and trained mentors from the private and public sector to work with the first two cohorts of YALI participants. Edna has worked in Kenya, Malawi, India, Bangladesh, Somalia and regionally in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Valentine is a Finance professional with 5 years’ experience in Audit. Beneficiary turned benefactor is not just a tag line for her. She joined the Global Give Back Circle in 2008 as a beneficiary. Today, she appreciates how far she has come.
Valentine recently discovered that her passion lies in the wellbeing of people. It is optimal well-adjusted people that make for a well-balanced society. She finds joy in sharing and helping people find the best in themselves. She is specifically passionate about the mentorship arm of Global Give Back Circle because it was very instrumental for her own journey towards finding herself.
Noni Kadzutu has been involved in formal mentoring programs focused on the girl child. Her passion is to see more young women break the glass ceiling that has for so long been viewed as a barrier to their success while giving back to their societies and empowering the next generation of women. Noni joined the GGBC program as a mentor in 2014. In 2019, she joined the Mastercard Foundation Scholars program as a mentor and continues to be a mentor under both programs to date. She is a coordinator between GGBC and one of the Kenyan private partners and has advocated and recruited numerous mentors to support the cause of GGBC.
Noni is an accountant by training and an auditor by profession with experience in the industry spanning over 14 years with experience gained from Deloitte and PWC in Kenya where she has grown through the ranks and is currently a Senior Manager. She holds a MSc in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University and is a Fellow member of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (FCCA).
Outside of work, she has a passion for supporting young women who have untapped potential that come her way. She does this through informal mentorship and education sponsorship to give them a chance to be socio-economically empowered.
Global Give Back Circle leverages connectivity to create opportunities for all women to make an impact. Today, history is in the making as 3,000 mentors walk alongside at-risk adolescent girls, providing them with the tools they need to rise up as economically empowered young women who are breaking down barriers, changing the systems and leading the movement for diversity and inclusion.
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