Wawira Njiru | Founder and Executive Director

Wawira is the founder of Food for Education, a social enterprise that is creating the blueprint for school feeding in Africa. F4E has provided over 15 million meals since inception and have scaled 14x since 2020. Wawira is the winner of the 2022 Global Icon Award by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, a 2021 Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum, and the 2021 United Nations Kenya Person of the Year. Wawira has a Bachelor’s degree in Nutrition and Food Science from the University of South Australia.

Wairimu Nyandia | Chief Operations Officer

Wairimu is a seasoned finance professional with over 10 years’ work experience across the financial services, healthcare, and managerial consulting industries. Her work has been centred on strategic operations, scale and expansion, financial strategy development, risk management, and internal control & processes implementation. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from KCA University, CPA(K), and an Executive MBA (Finance) from United States International University – Africa.

Ceverene Mureithi | Head of People

Ceverene leads our People department, building the human capital, systems, and processes Food for Education needs for our rapid scaling plans. She’s worked in a variety of recruitment and strategy roles at Shortlist, a leading recruitment firm working in 20+ countries globally. Ceverene started her career in banking, and she holds a Bachelor of Science in Development Studies from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and a Master’s in Development Studies from Lund University.

Liviya David | Head of Fundraising

Liviya leads our fundraising team, ensuring Food for Education has the financial resources to achieve our mission of feeding 6 million kids daily by 2030 She has extensive experience in strategy consulting and fundraising for social enterprises, NGOs, and for-profit businesses across East Africa. She has raised over $50 million in the course of her career. Liviya holds a Bachelor’s degree with honors in International Affairs with concentrations in Africa and global public health from George Washington University.

Wawira Njiru | Founder and Executive Director

Wawira is the founder of Food for Education, a social enterprise that is creating the blueprint for school feeding in Africa. Led by African women, they leverage payment technology and smart supply chains to source nutritious ingredients from local smallholder farmers, simplify distribution, and bring high-quality daily school meals to children. They have provided over 15 million meals since their first central kitchen opened in 2016 and their scalable, efficient model is creating a sustainable path to solve the child nutrition crisis for over 200 million African children.

Wawira is the winner of the 2022 Global Icon Award by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, a 2021 Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum, 2020 Ford Foundation Global Fellow, a 2018 Rainer Arnhold Fellow, a recipient of the Builders of Africa Award 2018, one of 2018’s Top 40 under 40 women in Kenya, and the youngest recipient of the University of South Australia’s alumni award in 2017. She is also the inaugural recipient of the Global Citizen Youth Leadership Prize 2018 presented by Cisco and the 2021 United Nations Kenya Person of the Year.

Kristin Richmond | Board Chair, Food for Education

Kristin is a true champion of healthy family nutrition and citywide wellness and co-founded Revolution Foods, PBC where she served as CEO and Board Chairwoman for over sixteen years. Revolution Foods has designed, produced and delivered over 800 million healthy school meals to public schools and vulnerable communities across the US since 2006. Prior to founding the company, she was Vice President of Resources for Indispensable Schools and Educators. Early in her career, she lived in Nairobi and co-founded the Kenya Community Center for Learning (KCCL).

Kristin began her career at Citi in Investment Banking. She was a member of the White House Council for Community Solutions and is a frequent lecturer at UC Berkeley and Stanford. Kristin is a Pahara Aspen Fellow, an Ashoka Fellow and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. She serves on the Board of Directors for Generate Capital, a leading clean energy investment company and sustainable infrastructure operator. She is currently a Senior Fellow of Draper Richard Kaplan (DRK) which invests exclusively in social entrepreneurs driving systems change. Most recently, Kristin was recognized as one of Inc.’s Top 100 Women Entrepreneurs of 2020 and Revolution Foods was twice named B Corp’s “Best for the World” Companies in 2021 and 2022.

Kristin holds a B.S. in Finance and Accounting from Boston College and a M.B.A. from U.C. Berkeley. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two sons.

Peter Njonjo | Co-founder and CEO, Twiga Foods

Peter Njonjo is Co-Founder and CEO of Twiga Foods, a company that aggregates informal retail demand and organizes an efficient supply chain for fresh and dry goods through a tech-enabled B2B platform.

Peter spent 21 years with The Coca-Cola Company with his last role being President of the West and Central Africa Business Unit, made up of 33 countries. Previously, Njonjo also led the Coca-Cola business in East Africa, overseeing six countries including Kenya. In this role, he stewarded investments of more than $1 billion over five years and led the restructuring of Coca-Cola’s route to market across East Africa.

Njonjo was President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kenya, a director of the American Business Council in Nigeria and has been voted among the top 100 young leaders in Africa by Forbes Afrique and “Top 40 under 40” by The Business Daily in Kenya.

He holds an M.B.A in Strategic Management, a B.S. degree in International Business Administration from United States International University in Kenya and an Executive Leadership Program from Harvard Business School.

Chris Holmes | International and Channel Director, Pizza Express

Chris is the International and Channel Director at PizzaExpress, where he leads all International, Delivery and Retail business the global Italian restaurant chain. He is the former Chief Development Officer of KFC UK, where he led KFC’s global expansion, particularly through franchising, and managed P&L.

Chris has an Executive MBA from London Business School and a Bachelor’s Degree in Management Sciences from the University of Warwick. He brings operations and scaling experience in the food world to the board.

Michelle Kagari | Global Director of Government Relations, One Acre Fund

Michelle is the Global Director of Government Relations and Policy at One Acre Fund (OAF). In her role, Michelle leads One Acre Fund’s Government Relations and Policy department, engaging with government partners to maximize OAF’s impact. Prior to her time at One Acre Fund, Michelle was the Deputy Regional Director of Amnesty International, where she facilitated the development and launch of the new office for East Africa, Horn of Africa and Great Lakes Region.

Michelle feels fortunate to have spent more than two decades in careers that reflect her passion for the advancement of human empowerment and social justice. Michelle has a Master of Science in Development Management from the Open University, an LLM in International Criminal Law and Armed Conflict from the University of Nottingham, and an LLB from the University of Nairobi.

Chris Martin | Coldplay

Chuck Robbins | CEO, Cisco

Chuck Robbins is the Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Cisco. He assumed the role of CEO on July 26, 2015 and was elected Chair of the Board on December 11, 2017. As Chair and CEO, he is focused on helping companies, cities, and countries around the world as they look to Cisco to connect, secure, and automate their organizations for a digital-first world.

Prior to joining Cisco, Chuck held management positions at Bay Networks and Ascend Communications. Mr. Robbins serves on the Board of Directors for BlackRock, the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum, the Business Roundtable, and is on the Board of Trustees for the Ford Foundation.

Ariel Rosen Ingber | Head of US Philanthropy

Ariel has over 2 decades of experience building nonprofits’ capacity relating to marketing, development and board governance. She served as the Head of Advancement and Chief communications Officer for Youth INC in NYC and worked with the Virgin brands and singer-songwriter Jewel to create a major campaign around youth homelessness. Ariel has built her career to marry resource with need, and now helps lead that effort for Food for Education in the US. Ariel has an MBA from Notre Dame and a BA from Rutgers College.