Ory Okolloh

Ory Okolloh was born in 1981 in Kenya and studied law at the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard Law School before beginning her career as a lawyer, while also building a reputation as one of East Africa's most influential bloggers and civic commentators through her blog Kenyan Pundit.

Following Kenya's disputed December 2007 presidential election, which triggered widespread post-election violence, Okolloh co-founded Ushahidi, meaning 'testimony' in Swahili, a crowdsourcing platform that allowed Kenyans to report incidents of violence via text message, mapping the unfolding crisis in near real time.

Ushahidi's open-source crisis-mapping technology proved so effective that it was subsequently adopted around the world for disaster response and civic monitoring, used following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, during election monitoring efforts across multiple countries, and in countless other crisis situations globally.

Okolloh went on to lead Google's policy and government relations efforts across Africa, helping shape the technology giant's engagement with African governments and civil society, before transitioning into investment, becoming a partner focused on technology investment across the continent.

Beyond her direct professional roles, Okolloh has remained an influential voice on African governance, transparency and technology, frequently cited as one of the continent's most significant civic technologists for building a platform that demonstrated how grassroots crowdsourced information could hold power accountable during crises.