Naisenya Mungai: Kenya’s First Female Engineer From The Ndorobo Community

Naisenya Mungai is the first female Ndorobo engineer in the country. A visionary leader, she has worked at Safaricom PLC for more than eight years and has been instrumental in spearheading digital transformation initiatives, fostering ecosystems engagements and innovation and enhancing operational efficiency and customer service at the leading telcos. 

Here is her story as told by WoK.

Naisenya Mungai Background and Education

The engineer hails from Suguta village in Marmar. She pursued a Bachelors degree in Electrical and Telecommunications engineering at Moi University. 

Naisenya Mungai Illustrious Career

She first interned as an electrical engineer at Specialized Power Systems Limited. This was followed by two other internships at Seven seas Technology Limited as an internal IT and Safaricom PLC, working in the Network Operations Center (NOC).  

 In November 2015, she was employed by Safaricom as the engineer of Network Planning and Optimization. 

When Safaricom started transitioning into a technology company, they founded the Safaricom Digital Academy and she was among its first cohort in 2018. After eight months boot camp, she upskilled to a software engineer. 

In September 2019, she was the engineer in charge of Home Customer Channels. 

In January 2020, she was the engineer of Network Optimization and Automation. Her role included leading android developer for Safaricom Home Installer app- Automation of the fiber to the home customer onboarding process.

Her achievements include improved customer activation process from thirty minutes to 3 minutes and reduced demand for call centers by 15%.

In June 2021, she became the digital delivery lead. During her time in this position, she spearheaded groundbreaking initiatives that positioned Safaricom as an industry giant.

In October 2023, she became the Technical Tribe Lead (TTL)- digital transformation. In this role, she is responsible for making Safaricom customers have a world class digital experience. 

Advice

Speaking to Safaricom Newsroom, Naisenya said that she used to be a stammerer. It was so bad that teachers would often give her a chalk to write her points on the board as she couldn’t coherently put them across.

The change happened without her knowing and today she can speak in different summits without a stutter. Her advice for people is that they should do things even when they are feeling scared. 

“Do it afraid. Do it when your voice is shaking. Do it when you don’t even know where the strength will come from. Do it big. Go for it and let no one tell you what you can do or what you cannot do,” she said.