Meet Karen Chelangat, our Chief Innovation Officer, a purpose-driven leader who is our local everything-guru 😊. She has a knack for figuring the pathway between the abstract and the practical, ensuring innovation drives real-world impact. Passionate about unlocking potential, she’s committed to helping everyone around her uncover their best selves and activate their untapped abilities, believing that the sum of individual transformations will have a multiplied effect on Africa’s transformation.

Fun Facts About Karen:

• Cross-industry explorer: Karen’s career spans 7 industries, with stints in multi-national to local companies, gathering experiences that shape her drive for locally-relevanthomegrown socioeconomic solutions.
• Teacher at heart: At the age of 16, Karen began teaching younger children, and even today finds joy in mentoring young entrepreneurs in the early startup years.
• Puzzler: She enjoys playing all sorts of puzzles, seeing them both as tools to sharpen the mental agility needed for work and life, and an inspiration that every challenge has a solution.

Core Belief: “The mind is the primary bridge between the here-now and the unimaginably possible”

What Karen Loves About Her Work:

Karen thrives on transforming abstract ideas into actionable plans that drive change. She is passionate about empowering young people to turn their ideas into income-generating businesses, and is inspired by the potential startups have to drive socioeconomic transformation in the continent. The most rewarding part of her role is nurturing a new generation of innovators and changemakers that make a tangible impact in their communities and beyond

Favorite Office Snack: Anything that has chocolate –her unscientifically proven hack for making deep work sessions that much more enjoyable.

Hidden Talent: Karen dabbles in the art of origami, whose intricate process of creating form from paper folds is a mirror of the process of innovation – translating unseen ideas, using the unconventional to build, and navigating the pressing demands of what’s obvious to reimagine alternative makings and workings of things.

Passionate Pursuit: Outside of work, Karen finds nature trails to explore, blending her love for nature with a quest for tranquility and inspiration.

Bucket List Goal: Karen dreams of producing a work of fiction – written or animated or both – that’ll leverage the power of storytelling to awaken dreams, kindle hope and inspire action in many Africans.