Sheilah Birgen has been recently appointed as KTN Global Alliance 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 which aims to promote poverty reduction through knowledge sharing, inclusive growth, promote job creation and opportunities to support innovations that can provide scalable impact.
Speaking on her recent appointment, Sheilah said: “It is such an honor to be joining the KTN Global Alliance Africa Programme. 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.
Nothing excites me more than this collaborative and inclusive approach to building strong innovation ecosystems in secondary cities using place-based innovation. The key mantra for me will be collaboration. I can’t wait to see what we build together!”
Sheliah 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 African businesses to scale.
Sheilah developed and executed mLab and iHub developer training, incubation and acceleration programmes for East African entrepreneurs, iHub Fellows, and mLab incubated startups.
She has mentored over 1,000 entrepreneurs across the continent. Sheilah Birgen was named by Root magazine among the top six black women in leading the charge to grow the technology sector across the African continent.
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.
Sheilah 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) to mention a few.
Sheilah Birgen holds an MBA in Global Business & Sustainability: Impact Entrepreneurship and a Master’s Degree in Management.
Featured Image: Sheilah Birgen, Country Lead, Kenya, KTN Global Alliance Africa
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