Technology . Strategist . Entrepreneur
Based: Kenya
Juliana Rotich is a technologist, strategic advisor, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker. She is Executive Director of BRCK, a not for profit affiliate of BRCK Inc. for deploying reliable technology for the edges of society, and advocating for internet access and literacy. She drives partnerships for tackling social problems through connectivity and appropriate technology. She is a Venture Partner in Africa Technology Ventures (ATV) which is raising a $50m fund to invest in and support the growth of tech enabled start-ups in key sectors in East and West Africa.
Juliana serves as an advisor to the councils of BASF, Microsoft 4Afrika, Risk Cooperative, Waabeh Ltd. and the Lemelson Foundation. She is also a trustee of the iHub in Kenya and Bankinter Foundation for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Spain.
Juliana co-founded Ushahidi , a non-profit tech company, born in Africa, which specializes in developing free and open source software for changing how information flows in the world. She was Executive Director from Jan 2011 to September 2015, strategically spearheading Ushahidi to be translated into over 30 languages, over 90,000 deployments and a 20 million populations reach. She was instrumental in raising both expanding business development revenue and philanthropic capital into Ushahidi and its related initiatives and offshoots like iHub. Before Ushahidi, she worked in the telecommunications and data warehousing industry with over 10 years of experience.
She is on the founding team of BRCK a hardware company that had developed the BRCK – designed and engineered as a rugged, self-powered, mobile Wi-Fi device which connects people and things to the internet in areas of the world with poor infrastructure. The company also makes other rugged solutions for emerging markets.
Her mission is to make things, fix problems and help others. Wherever technology can help to do these three things, she enjoys figuring out that intersection and adding constructive value. She is fascinated by technology ecosystems globally and works to support entrepreneurs to scale their work and impact.
She was named one of the Top 100 women by the Guardian newspaper and top 2 women in Technology 2011, and Social Entrepreneur of the year 2011 by The World Economic Forum.
