Charity Wanjiku

This week, 2017 fellow Charity Wanjiku was featured in an article for Ensto, a green tech company based in Finland. Charity is the founder of Strauss Energy, a firm that brings green energy products to off-grid communities in Kenya. The article highlights Strauss’s innovative roofing tiles that serve a dual function, both roofing and powering homes that did not otherwise have access to electricity.
In the article, Charity speaks about her career journey, chronicling the challenges she faced as a woman entering a male-dominated field. Although she was discouraged from pursuing architecture, she persisted, graduating with only five other women in her class. “Women number roughly half the planet’s population, and if we don’t use them it’s like we’re playing with only half the team,” she says. She also shares a challenge she gives her audiences when public speaking, calling on them to curate a three-pillared life philosophy based off of three-stone cooking culture in Africa. “I challenge you to find your three stones,” she says. “If you do that, everything else will align itself.”