Catherine Mahugu is the founder of Chiswara, An agri-tech & online platform, that offers an equitable coffee experience for farmers & consumers. They connect local coffee producers directly with global consumers. Chiswara’s farmer-focused approach & direct trade framework stimulates inclusive economic growth. Chiswara was born after Catherine witnessed Alibaba’s Rural Taobao initiative. The tech titan is helping to raise living standards in the Chinese countryside by providing e-commerce access for millions of residents.
Catherine Mahugu is also the founder of Soko . Soko is an innovation in fashion & technology; an ethical fashion brand that expands access to economic opportunity for artisans in emerging economies, disrupting the traditional export supply chain and revolutionizing the way money & goods are exchanged between developing world artisans & global consumers.
Catherine Mahugu is a software engineer by profession, and a change-maker by passion. With a love of all things binary and a keen eye for design, Catherine has been involved in various ICT for Development projects. In these projects, she has applied design thinking for social innovation.
She is a proven leader who inspires with enthusiasm. She is passionate about helping teams unlock their leadership potential and talents to not only achieve their goals but to exceed them. She focuses on motivating and igniting vision to the high performing team and leaders
Catherine is an award-winning serial social entrepreneur. She is an UNCTAD & Alibaba eFounder fellow, International Telecom Union (ITU) Innovators fellow, the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies – ICTs, a World Bank Fellow through infoDev and an Ashoka-American Express Emerging innovator fellow.
Catherine’s practical experiences, creative use of multimedia and her enthusiastic and passionate delivery, have proven to be a winning formula for tens of thousands of conference attendees including the Economist 2016 conference and Harvard 2017 conference.
