A telephone call from the US Embassy in Kenya late one evening in March, 2006 began the most extraordinary - and certainly most unlikely - ‘Cinderella story’ ever recorded on the pages of the life of an emerging Kenyan woman business leader.

Following a very successful Fortune’s Most Powerful Women’s summit in 2005, an idea was conceived by a group of American women leaders to share their skills and experiences with younger businesswomen from emerging economies of the world. Three partners – Fortune, the US State department and Vital Voices – quickly came together to actualize this exciting idea. The talented and inaugural group of 17 women began a phenomenal four week mentorship program in May 2006, in Washington DC, having been selected from hundreds of possible candidates coming from an initial 15 target countries.

It was this heart stopping phone call that came through to me at my busy factory to inform me that I had been successfully selected to represent Kenya on this program. As a marketing communications entrepreneur with a Journalism background, I learned I would be spending three of my four weeks mentoring under Ms Ann Moore, CEO and Chair of Time Inc and one of Fortune’s most powerful women.

The program aimed at inspiring us to realize our potential both as business and community leaders. By sharing their skills and personal stories of successfully climbing the corporate ladder, the inspiration was also meant to motivate each one of us to see how we could become engaged in our respective local levels to lead, inspire and bring about desired change.

Mentoring under Ann Moore was like nothing I had ever dreamed of. I spent time drawing her skills of best business practice, understanding how business must remain innovative in order to stay relevant to its markets. Through understudying Ann, I learned a leadership style that was warm, respectful but firm, unafraid of venturing into unchartered waters as she braved a major restructuring of her business at the time; a style that was sensitive to the needs of her community and used her network to bring about desired change, particularly amongst issues affecting women. Through her, I also had the amazing opportunity to meet some of America’s most influential people including Ms Condeeleza Rice, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, Princess Rania, Will Smith, Martha Stewart, Jennifer Lopez (JLo) Mark Antony and tons of other celebrities!

During my four week experience on the program as a mentee, I also took particular interest in the work of Vital Voices and desired be involved in some of the initiatives that they were actively engaged in- particularly those meant to increase women’s economic opportunities in Kenya.

Upon returning home to Kenya, I kept in touch with the organization. As luck would have it, Vital Voices invited me to join the newly formed Vital Voices Africa Advisory Board to work on issues pertaining to women’s economic empowerment. To this end, I was part of a Vital Voices and Standard Chartered Bank sponsored initiative in September, 2007 that facilitated a conference between 17 top African women business leaders and their peers in Shanghai, China. This was a very successful initiative as both sides were able to appreciate their common opportunities and strengths and overcome pre-existing socio-cultural prejudices.

In February 2008, Vital Voices invited me to participate in another successful program. Along with businesswomen and female lawyers from several other African countries I attended an advocacy workshop to address legal barriers to women’s economic progress. As a business leader, I had always wanted to formally acquire advocacy skills to use in several of my local initiatives to address the issues that were close to my heart.

As some of these issues discussed were very real and personal to me, this workshop gave me confidence and skills to do something. I soon found myself applying for a Vital Voices Leadership & Advocacy Grant to assist me create forums to promote women in the decision making process of economic leadership issues in Kenya and address the perennial lack of access to affordable credit for women in my country.

Independent from Vital Voices, I also became increasingly more involved in many ways. Upon returning home after the 2006 mentorship program, I was recruited by the Dr Susan Mboya, Founder of Zawadi Africa Education Fund, to constitute and chair her organization’s Kenyan Board.

The Zawadi Africa Education Fund raises scholarships for academically talented Kenyan girls who demonstrate leadership skills and come from very disadvantaged backgrounds. We currently have 54 young women in our program who have gained academic scholarships in universities that include MIT, Yale, Thomas Moore, Purdue, Smith, Mt Holyoke to name a few.

As Kenyan Board Chair, my mandate is to leverage the capacity of the fund to raise new, premium academic scholarships within the US and beyond, to train and prepare the scholarship recipients for their college careers and to ensure their participation in a mentorship program to help them actualize their personal and academic dreams and ambitions. Ann Moore has been an active supporter of this program by extending and has helped by extending her network to us.

In 2007, my company Color Creations became increasingly concerned about the high level of youth unemployment. In Kenya 75% of the nearly 34 million people are aged below 30 years old and a majority these citizens are unemployed. To make our contribution as corporate citizens in mitigating this chronic, national anomaly, Color Creations developed a business model under the banner – the be.campaign Through this campaign, Color Creations develops a wide range of assorted merchandise such as tee shirts, caps, bags, hats, mugs, etc and sells this retail to unemployed Kenyan youth. We then partner with a local micro finance bank that provides business loans and training to these youth so that they can start a business.

In addition to these activities, I have worked with the World Bank, International Finance Corporation, the German Technical Corporation (GTZ) and the Legatum Centre for Development and Leadership in partnership with MIT as an expert panelist to several forums regarding women and business in Africa.

My participation in all of these initiatives recently won me the Goldman Sachs/Fortune Global Leadership Award of the USD 50,000.00, an honor I share with my colleague, Phyllis Mwangi. I intend to use this money to further develop the work I am doing to promote girls’ education and combat youth unemployment. I will spend some of the award money to increase Zawadi Africa Education Fund’s capacity so that we can better identify the most deserving girls to award scholarships. I also intend to further develop the be.campaign and set up a Color Creations Women’s Equity/Micro Finance Fund through the Color Creations Trust. To this end, I will use some of this money to conduct a research to determine the viability of this investment and perhaps also register and provide the administrative structure for this venture fund. In addition to these investments, I seek to engage in new activities as well.

My church, the Nairobi Chapel also has some very well structured initiatives in some of Kenya’s slums. One initiative includes the rescue of street girls and their placement in half way houses awaiting skills and personal development. I intend to spend some of my money working in partnership with my church on several of these initiatives.

I am also a mother of two girls; Stephanie 15 years and Zawadi, 11 years. Stephanie wants to launch a teen age magazine in February 2009 and Zawadi would like to design and produce some Christmas cards to sell this year ‘to make some money”. I intend to give both of them some seed capital for their start up businesses and mentor both of them through their maiden experience of business!!

When the phone call came that late evening in March, 2006, that I had been identified for the role I filled as a woman business leader. This role didn’t completely capture the entirety of what I would become. Since my involvement with Vital Voices in 2006, I know without any doubt that my leadership skills and potential to be involved on a global platform have completely been remodeled - and for that, I am especially grateful.