Have you ever been hard on yourself and worried about who you should become to succeed? You are like Samantha.
“Early in my career, I was constantly worried about who I should be to succeed: Should I be louder? More aggressive? Ultimately the trying was exhausting and pointless,” she says.
She says prayer and faith helped her to realise that her power lay in being herself. This became the wing that carried her career from when she was a media manager at Mediacom to rising to her current position of Head of Media at Dentsu, a marketing and communications company.
“Faith is what helped me push past it — faith that God had not brought me this far to leave me there, that all I had to do was take one more step,” she says.
"For people seeking to start and run a busines, scout for partners you can trust in working towards a common goal."
A repeat nominee, [Samantha made it to the Top 40 Under 40 List in 2018] she studied marketing and economics and later, MBA in strategic management.
“This is a huge blessing, this country has such a wealth of talented, powerful women who truly are the unsung heroes of this economy. To be nominated once is an honour. Twice? A blessing that I am incredibly grateful for,” she says.
Her job at Dentsu involves developing media strategies for clients and aligning them with growing their revenue and brand equity. “My career has been a slow and steady climb, and I’m still climbing,” says Samantha when asked about what the turning point in her career was. One of the challenges Samantha has faced in her career is keeping her energy levels high when facing “an impossibility”.
Her advice to people seeking to start and run a business is to scout for partners they can trust in working towards a common goal.
On giving back, Samanta educates girls in secondary schools in Kajiado and Kangundo.
“My grandmother was a teacher in the 60s, so was my mum early in her career. The power of education was instilled in me from a young age. Learning is how young women find their voice and harness their collective power – it gives me great joy to support them as they grow to occupy their space in this world.”
Patrick Alushula