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Ten years ago, I started Elimu Hub as an idea not a fully fledged enterprise, but a quiet conviction. A conviction that community-led development deserved better tools, deeper collaboration, and above all, a kind of evidence that could speak for itself. What I didn’t know then was how much of myself I’d pour into proving that conviction true; project by project, client by client, year by year.

When I founded Elimu Hub, I was not just starting a business; I was navigating an ecosystem that has rarely nurtured talent like mine. The social impact sector, for all its noble aspirations, has often been unkind to Black women, especially those of us bold enough to bootstrap and dream while raising children alone. I did not have the luxury of waiting for conditions to be perfect. I had to create my own conditions.

Building a business as a single mother meant every decision carried weight. There was no fallback plan, no safety net. I knew instinctively that a traditional model wouldn’t work. Instead, I designed Elimu Hub as a modular, responsive hub, a business model agile enough to grow with me, not despite me. This allowed me to honour both my personal responsibilities and professional ambitions, and in many ways, helped me manage growth in a more grounded, sustainable way than most.

Over the years, I’ve seen countless incubator programs targeted at women rise and fall. Well-meaning as they are, many fall into the trap of over-mentoring and under-funding — preparing women to pitch, but not backing them when it counts. I’ve been in those rooms. I’ve seen the cycles repeat. And yet, while others chased recognition, I chose to build evidence. Quietly, intentionally, Elimu Hub became a home for strategy and systems thinking, for gender-inclusive programme design, for tools that translate complexity into action. From youth-led governance projects in Southern Africa to community-driven social compacts in Ghana, from hackathons to SDG-aligned CSI strategies. Every engagement has deepened my belief that capacity building is the true root of sustainable development. Not visibility. Not vanity metrics. But capacity.

Working across 14 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and the MENA region has shown me that collaboration, when done right, is a force multiplier. I’ve had the privilege of co-creating with NGOs, DFIs, private sector leaders and grassroots movements alike. What binds the most transformative projects is not scale, but shared ownership. In every context, my role has been to facilitate structures that allow collaboration to thrive; whether through toolkits, technical support, or strategic alignment.

Now, after a personal season of burnout and realignment, I stand more grounded in my purpose than ever before. I’ve returned not just to work, but to the work, the part that matters most to me: partnership development, collaboration design, and capacity building at the grassroots. It’s not just about what Elimu Hub offers; it’s about what we unlock together. As a Black millennial woman in South Africa, navigating a career in a country with staggering unemployment and shrinking pathways to purpose-aligned work, I know how rare — and how precious — this lane is. Our generation was told to study hard and dream big, but the systems we entered weren’t built for us. Career growth, especially in social impact, often required either assimilation or silence. I chose neither. I chose to carve my own lane — one marked by challenging possibilities and grounded in my love for landscape transformation.

Looking back, I see the journey not as a straight line, but as a series of concentric circles, expanding outward with each lesson, each collaboration, each risk taken. Elimu Hub has been the canvas for that evolution. And now, as we scale with clarity and intention, I remain guided by the same quiet conviction that started it all: that transformation is possible when we centre community, honour complexity, and build capacity like it truly matters.

Because it does. Let’s get back to work!