Susan Mboya is a corporate executive and philanthropist who is the Principal and International Advisor for Navigators Global a Washington DC based consulting firm. Susan has been a corporate executive for over 25 years and has held a number of senior executive positions at global multinational firms. Susan was the Global Director for Oral B Oral Care at Procter and Gamble for 5 years and was the General Manager of Coca-Cola South Africa from 2008 to 2011. Susan is the immediate former President of the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation and the group director of the Eurasia Africa Group (EAG) for women’s economic empowerment at Coca-Cola. and is the daughter of the late Tom Mboya, a Kenyan nationalist leader, and one of the founding fathers of the Republic of Kenya and the late Pamela Mboya, a renowned diplomat who was Kenya’s representative to UN Habitat. Tom Mboya was a well-known trade unionist, educationist, Pan Africanist, author, and a Cabinet Minister in Kenyas first post-independence Government. She is also the former First Lady of Nairobi County, Kenya's largest county and the capital city and economic centre of Kenya. Susan holds a number of board positions including the Chair of Liberty Group, a publicly traded company in the nairobi stock exchange. Susan is the Founder of the Zawadi Africa Educational Fund, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that provides scholarships and leadership development training to academically gifted, marginalized African girls to enable them to attend top colleges and universities around the world with the objective of creating a pipeline of African female leaders. The Zawadi Africa program is based on the Africa Student Airlifts program launched by her father and President John F. Kennedy in 1959 that enabled several participants including Barack Obama Sr, father of President Barack Obama, and Professor Wangari Mathaai to study in the U.S.
Susan Mboya official portrait August 2016
Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya was a Kenyan trade unionist, educator, Pan-Africanist, author, independence activist, and statesman. He was one of the founding fathers of the Republic of Kenya. He led the negotiations for independence at the Lancaster House Conferences and was instrumental in the formation of Kenya's independence party – the Kenya African National Union (KANU) – where he served as its first Secretary-General. He laid the foundation for Kenya's capitalist and mixed economy policies at the height of the Cold War and set up several of the country's key labour institutions. Mboya was Minister for Economic Planning and Development when he was assassinated.
Mboya in 1962
A monument in honour of Mboya erected at Moi Avenue, Nairobi