The KTN Global Alliance Africa has appointed Sheilah Birgen as the Country Lead for Kenya. The KTN Global Alliance Africa is a project co-funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and Innovate UK.
The projects aims to promote poverty reduction through knowledge sharing, inclusive growth, promote job creation and opportunities to support innovations that can provide scalable impact.
Sheilah has over 12 years of experience in the African ecosystem and community building. She is an entrepreneur and mentor coach with expertise in the African startup policy. As an innovation and Strategy Specialist, she has supported numerous African businesses to scale and expand.
Her achievements include the development and execution of mLab and iHub developer training, incubation and acceleration programs for East African entrepreneurs, iHub Fellows and mLab incubated startups.
She has mentored over 1,000 entrepreneurs across the continent, and was named by Root magazine among the top six black women in leading the charge to grow the technology sector across Africa.
Under her leadership in 2015, mLab was listed in the top 10 best accelerators 2015-2017 in the World by UBI Global Benchmark, the only accelerator from a developing country.
She is also a Guest Lecturer on Entrepreneurship and has spoken on African Startup Support, Digital transformation and community building in Africa in more than 50 International Conferences.
She has also worked with over 20 international organizations as partners including World Bank, Spider, USAID, Hivos, Intel, Samsung, Nokia, Google, Facebook, Governments (Kenya, Finland) and more.
Sheilah holds an MBA in Global Business and Sustainability-Impact Entrepreneurship and a Master’s Degree in Management.
Commenting on her appointment, Sheilah said, “It is such an honor to be joining the KTN Global Alliance Africa Program. In my new role, I will leverage my knowledge, skills, and networks to develop synergy and collaboration between academia, entrepreneurs, governments (both regionally and globally), investors, and communities.”