Director & Founder

Jane is the Founder-Director of The Toolkit for Skills and Innovation Hub. Jane founded The Toolkit in 2014 in response to the growing scale of the youth unemployment crisis in Kenya and in recognition of the profound shortage of skilled labour in the construction, infrastructure, mining, and gas sectors. Jane’s previous experience working for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in conflict zones across the world taught her that a large pool of frustrated, unemployed young people provided an easy target for recruitment as fighters to fuel conflicts, which displace more people and increase social inequalities. This inspired her to launch The Toolkit as a way of providing youth with essential life and technical skills in order to provide alternative life paths to violence, crime, drugs, radicalization, and irregular migration.

Jane holds a Masters in Law (LL.M) from Harvard Law School and has over 15 years of global experience in the practice and application of international human rights, humanitarian and refugee law with UNHCR across Europe and Africa. She has designed and implemented multiple empowerment projects and Training of Trainers (TOT) curricula for youth, women, and refugee communities in various areas including security, basic education, and gender mainstreaming. Jane is an accomplished researcher and has authored numerous publications and tools for government officials, the UN, and NGOs. Included among her publications are Gaps in Kenya’s Regulatory Framework on Workplace-Based Training (ILO, 2010); A Synthesis of Inter-Agency Knowledge on Workplace-Based Training Applicable to Skills Training for Vulnerable Youth in Kenya (ILO, 2019) and Standards and Instruments for Pedagogical Upskilling of Master Craftsmen in Kenya (World Bank, Government of Kenya Youth Employment Opportunities Project, 2017)