It is easy for Elizabeth to keep her head in the clouds. After all, since October 2022 she has been Vodafone’s (Safaricom’s parent company) Head of Cloud Engineering, leading a troop—or should we say cloud—of 180 engineers and developers in the UK, Egypt and India.
Before Vodafone, she was Head of Digital Engineering at Safaricom.
“I am at Vodafone for an assignment as Head of Cloud Engineering (global) based in London. Our main goal is to build a cloud-based engineering platform to revolutionise how Vodafone works by driving engineering maturity and enabling our engineers to build customer products at pace as well as enabling the global API marketplace ambition for Vodafone,” she says.
Elizabeth knows all about trailblazing: She was the first senior female leader in information technology at Safaricom; she was one of six women in a class of 33 at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) where she earned her Computer Science degree.
"Both the little and the big things. Every opportunity is a chance for you to shine. Do the smallest of things with excellence. Be patient and resilient. "
But Elizabeth wanted more. She has always wanted more.
“My favourite part of the job is that I work with passionate people, in that part of the organisation that is ever exploring and building innovative solutions.”
Looking back on her career she pinpoints the moments that led her here.
“Every step in my journey prepared me for the next,” she says.
She put in the work but she also had mentors who invested in her and shortened her learning journey and put the wind in her sails.
She says the one career lesson that has kept her flourishing is doing everything with excellence.
“Both the little and the big things. Every opportunity is a chance for you to shine. Do the smallest of things with excellence. Be patient and resilient. Nothing good comes on a silver platter, you don’t get extraordinary results by doing ‘just enough.’”
Eddy Ashioya
