Joanne Marime is a Kenyan working for Microsoft and is also an author, speaker and a career and confidence coach. Prior to this, she was living in Kenya and was once homeless after losing her job. Today, the Alliance High School alumna is flying high and also offers coaching to other determined job seekers. 

Her first published book “Interviewing with Confidence, 6 Steps to Ace an Interview” is a perfect read for those looking for job opportunities. 

Here is her story as told by WoK,

Education 

Her parents were both educators, her father being a High school teacher and her mother a primary school teacher. 

Marime studied in Nyamira primary school from class one to three before joining Itiero Primary School in Kisii. 

She then got her secondary education at Alliance High School and later  joined Jomo Kenyatta University of Science and Technology where she pursued a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Computer Technology/ Computer Systems Technology. 

Work experience after college

She did her internship at Barclays Bank of Kenya as a collections officer.  After the internship, she worked in a warehouse for 5 months in Dandora.

The warehouse where Marine worked did not offer a conducive environment as she faced insults and the payment was often delayed. 

She  quit the job and found herself unable to pay rent and that’s how she found herself homeless. She had to depend on Friends to survive.

Before relocating to the US, she managed to work in non- profits as: 

• An office manager and external relations associate at One Acre Fund 

• Group Officer Manager at Chronicle Group International Inc 
• Office Administrator and Finance Officer at Africa Institute for Development Policy. 

Relocating to America

It wasn’t easy to relocate to the US since the embassy denied her visa a number of times. Fortunately, she got one and moved to the U.S where she joined Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University.  

A friend invited her to the National Black MBA conference in Philadelphia where things worked out for her. 

At the conference she was shocked to see Harvard, Yale, which were top schools, on peoples’ badges. 

She received five offers from Microsoft, Apple and other organizations but managed to land a job at ExxonMobil where she worked as a finance Transformation Program Intern, a project manager and later a finance analyst. 

In 2021, she joined Amazon as a program manager and the following year joined Microsoft as a senior project manager.