By Mwaniki Nyaga, KamiLimu Management Committee Member
Design provides us with choices to define ourselves. It is often hidden in places, within services and in business innovation. Nowadays, people are finding a deeper sense of identity, purpose and gratification through creating and maintaining connections, memories and experiences. Oftentimes, this cannot be derived only from material product purchases. Therefore, we have come from the idea that designers simply make appealing and usable components and products, to an appreciation that their work impacts the perception of entire brand and customer experiences, and beyond that — to making those experiences meaningful.
In this…
By Mwaniki Nyaga, KamiLimu Management Committee Member
Earlier this year, I posited that one of the key components of a strong community is an environment where members feel welcome to share their questions, knowledge, and ideas. I met Tabitha two years ago when she joined KamiLimu’s fourth cohort as a mentee. It was soon revealed to me that we were both Computer Science students at the University of Nairobi’s School of Computing and Informatics. …
By Mwaniki Nyaga, KamiLimu Management Committee Member
In March this year, 10 days after he started his new role as a junior full-stack engineer at MediaPal, a programmatic advertising company, Meshack conducted a session on preparing for technical interviews alongside his new employer and MediaPal’s Co-Founder, Eric Wesonga. Impressed by his ease in delivery of technical content to an audience of KamiLimu mentees, I decided to prod him further on his experience applying for the role as well as how he had been coping with the government-mandated lockdown and its repercussions.
Meshack recently completed his coursework towards a bachelor’s degree…
By Mwaniki Nyaga, KamiLimu Management Committee Member
Søren Kierkegaard said of life: it can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards. Jacklyne Betty has thus far lived a life that reveals hidden motifs only in retrospect. We see her altruism come out from her initial interactions in nursery school, her fascination with and structured approach to science manifest quite early in her primary schooling journey and her ability to continually go back to the drawing board until it all becomes clear play out over and over again.
In this interview, Jacklyne, a machine learning data scientist, shares her…
By Allan Wasega, KamiLimu Committee Member
One of the unique attributes that stand out for me regarding KamiLimu mentees is their resilience and desire to enhance their skills despite the obstacles that they may face. For example, last year, we admitted a student — Everlyn Asiko — from Kakamega-based Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST). Everlyn was one of our outstanding mentees in her cohort and was recognized for travelling all the way from Kakamega to Nairobi to attend our sessions. She also inspired today’s interviewee from the same institution, Terry Muthoni, to apply to KamiLimu.
By Mwaniki Nyaga, KamiLimu Management Committee Member
I first met Elena Mwangi when we were both KamiLimu 3.0 mentees working on a group innovation project. Looking back, what particularly stood out for me was her sarcasm, morbid jokes and the graceful way she would speak while delivering a personal speech or explaining our group’s pitch deck to judges.
Almost three years later, I sat her down for an interview via Zoom to understand what drives her as a person, her fascination for data and the goals and achievements she has made as a peer mentor in the KamiLimu Data Science…
By Allan Wasega, KamiLimu Committee Member
I first met Martin Mwangi, who is the Technical Solutions Lead Consultant at Serianu Limited, when I was a KamiLimu 3.0 mentee as he was taking the group through the basics of cybersecurity. Looking back, what particularly stood out for me was his graceful way of introducing us to what cybersecurity entailed and the key attributes that students need to excel in the field. …
By Allan Wasega, KamiLimu Committee Member
A recent email from Dr. Chao to the team sums up what many of us are experiencing:
2020 was the year when I won a big award, and two of my long-term desires were coming true. I had just been booked to speak at TEDx, and I was confirmed to travel to the University of Oxford on an all-expense-paid trip to speak at a conference. You see, I have always looked at the world as a village that is accessible to me. And in that view, I envisioned myself speaking at universities around the…
By Mwaniki Nyaga, KamiLimu Management Committee Member
A strong community is propped up by a handful of key components: shared values, a desire to learn, clear guardrails for participation and, perhaps most importantly, an environment where members feel welcome to share their knowledge, questions, and ideas. I caught up with Wangechi Murimi, one of KamiLimu’s cohort 5.0 mentees, for a chat about her journey as a human being: to understand what drove her to seek mentorship, her current and future aspirations, and her perspective on what KamiLimu means and whether it fulfils the key components of community.
Why did you…
By Allan Wasega, JKUAT Computer Science student, KamiLimu Management Committee Member
In February 2020, while receiving her Elsevier Award, KamiLimu’s founder and Program Lead, Dr Chao had the following to say about being a scientist:
One of the greatest privileges of being a scientist is that we have the ability to hold the ladder up for others and, in so doing, build skills and change lives.
In her own work, Dr Chao achieves this objective by being the lead mentor to a group of students through KamiLimu. …
KamiLimu
KamiLimu is a free 8-month structured mentorship program that seeks to augment classroom learning for Computer Science students at Kenyan universities.
