Eileen Flannigan, Founder and Executive Director
Eileen Flannigan is a global social entrepreneur, a creator and collaborator of solutions for poverty, education, leadership gaps, and gender equality.
Eileen leverages her 20 years experience in tech innovation to lead international collaborations that are advancing gender equality and women’s leadership. She held senior executive roles in Digital Marketing, Partnerships and Innovation for both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies, in Silicon Valley and New York City. She pioneered global classrooms and led AT&T Interactive’s partnership with Skype to deliver information and learning access to millions of underserved children across the world.
In her transition to the social sector, Eileen served with Kiva.org and was responsible for building an integrated approach for government and financial services serving women entrepreneurs in India. With Kiva in Kenya, she led women entrepreneurship investment leveraging MPesa, a mobile money platform, and championed character lending through the alliance of over 100 local community nonprofits. In addition, she has worked with various organizations in Southern and Eastern Africa on gender-lens impact investing and achieving bold impact oOufftcomes. Currently, she is advising Strathmore University Business School in Nairobi on their social innovation center and will be teaching social innovation classes in 2020.
Eileen holds degrees from Stanford University (Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation), University of California, Irvine (Masters of Business Administration), University of California, Los Angeles (B.A., Sociology and Psychology) and is an Agent Of Change Fellow at the CentreicDesign For Her finalist from the Gates Foundation. She is known as a cross-functional leader and always striving to support diverse women and girls on their leadership journey. She has been featured in Vice News, Emerging Women, and well known podcasts, The Good Life Project and Practice You with Elena Brower. She served as a board Co-Chair for Restore Foundation, which combats sex-trafficking domestically and Rona Foundation, a CBO focused on human rights of women and orphans in Kenya.
Roselyn Knight , Teacher Leader
Rosy, as she’s known, is a teacher at the Kibera School for Girls and have known many of the Girls On Fire since they were in pre-K. She is a passionate educator that is focusing her efforts on advancing the girl child that is being left behind for opportunities and access to education. She believe this is the biggest emergency in Kenya today and that more resources and individual efforts needs to be given to ensure a girl’s life is not wasted. She believes every Kenyan women has the responsibility to nature the talents and provide educational pathways for the next generation of women leaders, which starts early with the girl child.
Rose Akinyi Olum, Teacher Leader
is the matron of SHOFCO's Margaret Safe House since 2010. She is the primary caregiver for the girls and takes care of all their basic, medical and spiritual needs. She attained a certificate in Early Childhood Studies and is an accomplished ECD teacher, having worked in several Early Childhood Institutions, from 2005 -2009. She was also an educator at the Centre for Disease and Control (CDC).
Why are you passionate about GOF?
Rose says, "Working with the Girls On Fire Leaders has made me develop a very positive attitude towards leadership. I now know how to develop leadership in children as I delegate and organize duties for each girl everyday and integrate responsibility skills into their daily lives. Since the GOF Camp, our home has completely changed; the girls have developed teamwork skills and integrity in doing daily tasks like cleaning, cooking and helping each other out. The girls who previously had nighttime traumas (nightmares and bedwetting) are doing great and able to sleep happily throughout the night. Our home has more harmony." Read more about Rose here.
Faith Mungai, Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher
Faith is a certified yoga teacher living in Nairobi and began her yoga training with her teachers Baron Baptiste and Paige Elenson in 2009. Faith has been working with Africa Yoga Project for the past 10 years and studied with world renowned teachers, David Life, Sharon Cannon, Jule Fibres, Manju Jois, Sherry Zack, , Sue Jones, and many senior Baptiste teachers; who have all come in Kenya to share their wisdom. Faith has completed workshops and training in yin and yang yoga, Swedish massage, Jivankuti yoga, Next generation yoga, yoga for the special need people, Trauma Informed Mind and body, yoga for your own determination, communication skills, meditation, yoga for addiction advanced art of assisting, and alignment. For the last 5 years, she has received monthly mentorship with Sherry Zack, Ann Grummel and Tracy Cane and finds this support incredibly empowering and inspiring for all aspects in her life. Faith is passionate about promoting peace, love and sharing in her country, eradicating poverty from her life and other youths through using the transformative healing of yoga.
Her goal is to see the young Girls On Fire Leaders become next generation leaders that have tools for resilience, empathy, perspective, inclusive solutions and always lead with love above anything else.
Hellen Ateyno, Youth Activist Leader
Hellen graduated from Strathmore University three years ago with a degree in business finance and landed a good job in Nairobi. However, the suffering of her people in Turkana in Northern Kenya was calling at her heart and she decided to move back to make a difference in the lives of young girls in the region who are often married off at age 13 years old. She started a mentoring and leadership traveling program that has 100 volunteers that serves the 6 very remote sub-counties in Turkana.
Hellen joined Girls On Fire Leaders in 2019 as a facilitator on our first camp in Turkana. Her amazing life story of how she took off her traditional beads and fought for her education has inspired not only girls but boys, mothers and elders and has spread in the villages. She now gets so many requests from Turkanans to hear her story and ask her questions.
Interns, Bolo Literacy App by Google
In partnership with Strathmore University to employ recent graduates and community activists to mentor Girls On Fire Leaders in advocacy for girls education and reading skills. The internship is 9 months and will do community outreach initiatives to encourage parents to support learning through Bolo and be peer-mentors for the literacy journey of a young learner. In addition, we will work with Google to improve gender equality content and ongoing to provide digital training opportunities for young girls.