Steve Okeyo
Executive Leadership Program - Amsterdam Class 15
I was born in a small rural town on the shores of the world’s second largest fresh water lake, Victoria. I had a sunny childhood which revolved around family, play and school. We did not have television and so I read any book we could find. We were curious and wanted to travel far and wide in search of the adventures that lay in distant lands.
My career started out in public service and then progressed through sales, marketing and General Management. My really exciting jobs were with The Coca-Cola Company in Nairobi from where I covered some 17 countries in Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands at different times over a ten-year period. I later moved on to Lafarge and ran commercial operations in a cluster of five countries before becoming a Commercial Project Director in the Paris office. Here, I was responsible for commercial change management in 60 countries across the world. I left this post to become a Commercial Director at Safaricom, an innovative player in telecommunication and financial technology. I left Safaricom at the end of 2018 and I am currently on a search for new opportunities on company boards, in General Management and Consultancy.
I really enjoyed my earlier assignments because I see communities benefitting directly or indirectly through shareholding and distribution value chains. As a leader, I am keen on creating other leaders. I am also passionate about early education and the role it plays in uplifting communities. I like reading, playing golf or jogging round the neighborhood in my free time. I am a certified Executive Coach and work (mostly pro-bono) with middle level and senior corporate managers. I am also a visiting professor of marketing at the Africa Leadership University business school in Kigali, Rwanda. My family and I have had the great privilege of living in Kenya, Mauritius, Uganda and France from where we travelled far and wide and become the better for it. I am at a point in my life where I need to chart a new direction or re-commit to the present one.
