Florence Mpaayei is the Executive Director of the Nairobi Peace Initiative – Africa. She has extensive experience in conflict transformation training and facilitation, networking for peace, and in relief work. Her special interest is how conflict-affected women can be involved in community and national peace building. Florence is trained in conflict transformation and peace building.
She previously served in the Care Taker Committee and brings to the board the wisdom of managing change processes and sustaining a motivated human capital for a growing organisation.
Julie Gichuru is a media personality currently working for Royal Media. She is the Group Digital Business Manager/Talk Show Host, Royal Media Services.
Julie is responsible for spearheading the move towards establishing a global presence through the internet and raising revenue through digital platforms. Julie also hosts the prime time news program Sunday Live. Julie as well did the celebrated Fist to Five for Change, a search for common ground in Kenya after the PEV. Previously Julie was Current Affairs Editor, News Anchor and Talk Show Host at NTV, Nation Media Group where she hosted one of Kenya's leading talk shows, On the Spot. She launched a number of Kenya's best rated talk shows, including The Fourth Estate, Showdown, You the Jury, The People's Voice and the celebrated post election specials Voices of Reason. She is articulate and passionate about women’s rights.
Julie is the first African woman to receive the Martin Luther King Salute to Greatness Award for Advocacy of Active Non-Violence and Peace during the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008. She is a fellow of the Africa Leadership Initiative, which is part of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Julie has been declared a Young Global Leader under the World Economic Forum. She also serves on the Africa Advisory Board for MYC4.
Mildred Ngesa is a seven-times award winning journalist with over fourteen years’ experience as a human interest features writer and a columnist. She won her very first media award (the FAWE Award for Media Excellence, FAME) in 1998 when she was still a ‘rookie’ based on her dedicated efforts to give a voice to the oppressed girl-child through her journalism work. She is exceptionally known for her “voice of the voiceless” kind of feature stories, championing justice for the communities of the urban poor through her work as well as spear-heading matters for policy change and social accountability through the pen.
Mildred has had the opportunity to work as a reporter and a columnist for all the three mainstream print media houses in Kenya; The Kenya Times, The East African Standard and until recently, The Daily Nation where as a Senior Special projects writer, she consistently reported on social injustices and pushed for transparency and accountability in government through a weekly one-page column titled; Monday Mix- where wisdom comes quietly. It is through her efforts in this column that in June 2008, Mildred was appointed to serve at the Commission of Inquiry into Post-elections Violence (CIPEV), as a the Media & Communications officer.
Mildred also served as the Media & Communications Officer for the Kenya Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission in its initial stages in 2009. Currently, she serves as the Media & Communications Consultant for the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution – CIC.
Mildred is passionate about women, peace and security matters and is part of the global movement for women in peace and security. She is a co-founder of the regional women’s movement, a sisterhood initiative UDADA (www.udadaforpeace.org; in solidarity with the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace & security. She is also the founder of Peace Pen Communication, an initiative that promotes responsible journalism and a call to the media to re-define its role in ensuring social change, building peace, conflict resolution as well as sustaining resilient communities through advocacy journalism.
Nancy Amayo has over nine years experience in providing strategic and specialist financial advisory, financial evaluation and audit services to development-oriented and commercial clients in Kenya. As a financial and administrative specialist Nancy’s experience spans from institutional audits, financial analysis, operational efficiency evaluations and institutional assessments on financial systems. She now Works for Land O’ Lakes.
Ex-official and the Executive Director
Saida Ali has over 10 years experience in feminist leadership development and feminist social justice work; women’s leadership and young women’s leadership development, capacity building for protection and advancement of women’s and girls’ rights, promotion of sexual and reproductive health and rights/ programming on young persons’ sexuality health and rights, leadership and empowerment programming for women in post conflict situations and programming on sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) for women in refugee settings.
Saida sits on the global board of AWID, the Association of Women in Development; an organization of close to 5,000 individual and over 300 institutional members, drawn from 130 countries from every region of the world.She is the immediate Executive Director of Young Women Leaders Institute (YWLI), an organisation she co-founded.She is an alumnus (2007) of the Archbishop Tutu Fellowship Programme at the African Leadership Institute.
