Before I understood success, I understood belonging.
My journey has taken me from Dago Kogelo in western Kenya to universities, classrooms, rugby fields, community organizations, and ventures in the United States and Africa. The places changed. One lesson kept returning: none of us arrives alone.
Dago: where the story begins
I grew up in Dago Kogelo Village in western Kenya, in a large family and in a community where people often had to become the support system that formal systems could not always provide.
By the time I finished high school, HIV and AIDS had changed families across our region. I began working around an orphanage and women’s resource center and found myself asking a question that has followed me ever since: what can we build so that opportunity does not depend on luck?
A scholarship later opened the door for me to attend United States International University–Africa in Nairobi. The expectation attached to that opportunity was simple: help another young person access education. That experience gave language to something I had already seen in community life: opportunity carries responsibility, and responsibility means widening the circle.
While studying, I also helped develop medical and sports activities that brought young people and community members together around health, learning, and connection. Years later, that same village relationship continues through Dago Dala Hera and Friends of Dago.
Indiana: learning to belong somewhere new
Graduate school brought me to the University of Evansville, but Indiana became much more than a place where I earned a degree. It became a community that gave me room to teach, coach, experiment, serve, and grow.
I taught business education within the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation, worked with students and colleagues around social innovation at the University of Evansville, and spent years coaching rugby in the Evansville community. Those experiences taught me different versions of the same lesson: people grow when they are trusted with responsibility, given support, and allowed to see themselves differently.
Indiana was also where Friends of Dago took formal shape. In many ways, it became the bridge between the community that raised me and the community that had welcomed me.
Florida: building the next chapter
Greater Orlando is home today. My work here has included higher education, youth development, environmental and community initiatives, entrepreneurship, organizational strategy, multicultural community life, and the growing relationships that connect Florida with Kenya and the wider African diaspora.
At Rollins College, I continued working at the intersection of social innovation, entrepreneurship, and student learning. Outside campus, I found myself drawn again to the same kind of work I had known in Kenya and Indiana: creating spaces where people can meet, build, test ideas, and feel that they belong in the conversation.
Young InnoPreneurs grew from that impulse. Odoyo Consultancy created a professional home for strategy and organizational work. Roselands opened another expression of connection through travel, culture, place, and Africa. Friends of Dago remains the long bridge home.
The root beneath the work
The simplest language I know for it is Ubuntu: I am because we are. Not as a slogan, but as a way of understanding how people, opportunity, and responsibility are connected.
Ideas matter when people can use them. Education matters when it opens doors and helps others open more. Leadership matters when it creates room for other people to lead. Travel matters when it deepens understanding and relationship rather than simply moving people from one place to another.
I am still learning. The questions that continue to matter most sit where community, education, identity, entrepreneurship, systems, and belonging meet—and in the practical work of turning shared ideas into something useful.