From law to diplomacy, women speak candidly about leadership, failure and accountability
Women raise a glass to Gina Din Kariuki's new book, Beyond the Ballot, during a high-tea event at the Muthaiga Golf Club on February 9, 2026.
What you need to know:
- At Muthaiga Golf Club, women leaders gathered for Gina Din Kariuki’s Beyond the Ballot launch, debating power, accountability, faith, and intergenerational trust in Africa.
- Convened by Gina Din Kariuki, the transgenerational forum examined governance beyond elections, urging judgment, humility, feminist solidarity, and accountable leadership across African institutions.
On a quiet Monday afternoon in February, a private room at Muthaiga Golf Club held a gathering that did not look like a political meeting, a policy forum, a governance workshop, or a book launch. Yet it was all four, and more.
Outside, banners marked the occasion. Inside, just a table set for high tea, and around it, women whose lives have unfolded at the intersection of law, diplomacy, business, public service, human rights, environmental governance, and feminist organising. Beneath the surface elegance, there was gravity, the kind that settles into a room when people who have shaped institutions, advised governments, negotiated crises, and carried the weight of public consequence speak candidly, with no scripts and no posturing.
This was a women-only, transgenerational gathering convened by Gina Din Kariuki, founder and chair of the Gina Din Group, to mark the release of her latest book, Beyond the Ballot. The book is a rigorous interrogation of leadership, governance, and public trust in Africa. The afternoon, however, quickly revealed itself as something deeper, a living extension of the book's central argument: that leadership is not an event, a victory, or a title. It is a sustained responsibility.
The names around the table told their own story: Villoo Nowrojee, veteran feminist and activist; Betty Kaari Murungi, human rights lawyer and democratic reform advocate; Prof Judi Wakhungu, former Cabinet Secretary and Ambassador; Catherine Mwangi, former High Commissioner to South Africa; Helen Gichohi, ecologist and conservation leader; Brenda Mbathi, CEO of Trific; Robyn Emerson of Yellow Rose Kenya; Sheena Raikundalia, entrepreneur and policy advisor; Annastacia Waweru of Taraji Impact Fund; Edith Nyabicha, policy analyst; Patricia Gathuri, financial expert; and Lanji Ouko Awori, lawyer and managing partner.
Conversations flowed easily, and there was a quiet assurance among women who shared a seriousness about power. Their uniting concern was how power is gained, how it is exercised, and how often it fails the people it is meant to serve. They agreed that power, in too many African contexts, fails not because it is seized by the wrong people, but because it is exercised without restraint, humility, or memory. The ballot delivers authority, but what follows is often improvisation, ego, or silence.
In her opening reflections, Gina Din spoke not only about success but about what comes after it.
"I wrote this book because leadership is often discussed at the point of victory," she said. "Yet governance begins after people have won. Elections can give you power, but they cannot help you govern."
Long before Beyond the Ballot became a physical book, it existed as a quiet unrest within her.
"I realised that we keep talking about leadership only at election time. As though governance begins and ends with the ballot. But women have been governing homes, institutions, movements, and values long before they ever had political power."
She wanted to interrogate power differently, not power as position, but power as influence, stewardship, and responsibility. For 18 months, she wrote, consulted, and documented.
"Some days it was easy. Most days it wasn't. But I made a commitment, to myself and to the women whose stories I was holding, that I would show up."
She wrote through exhaustion, through competing demands, through moments of doubt. "I prayed for discipline, clarity, and honesty. I didn't want to romanticise leadership. I wanted to tell the truth with grace."
To do this honestly, she sought voices beyond her own. She brought in Moky Makura, James Shikwati, and Anver Versi, chosen not for their titles alone but because they had lived leadership and paid its price.
"I was interested in personalities who have paid the price of leadership," she told the room. "People who have wrestled with doubt, sacrifice, faith, friendship, and failure, and kept going."
Her argument, drawn from more than three decades working with presidents, ministers, and institutions across the continent, was straightforward: Africa's leadership crisis is not a shortage of authority but a shortage of judgment, credibility, and trust.
"Leadership is not about convoys, flags, or bodyguards. It is a responsibility. Countries rise when leadership is thoughtful and steady, not dramatic."
When government and civil society confuse their roles
For Betty Murungi, whose life's work has spanned democratic reform, civil society organising, and human rights law, the failure of leadership often lies in how power is misunderstood, particularly the relationship between government and those who seek to hold it accountable.
"Civil society exists to hold power accountable while government exists to govern. But often we confuse the roles or expect one to perform the role of the other. This automatically creates paralysis."
She had watched reform movements fracture because they mistook proximity for power, and power for control. She pointed to Kenya's post-2002 moment, when activists moved into government hoping for transformation, only to find themselves isolated by former allies demanding instant change.
"The government moves at a different pace. Accountability is important, but so is strategy."
Her critique was sharpest on communication. Governments, she said, too often confuse party messaging with public explanation, and spokespersons perform politics instead of articulating policy. "When policy is not explained, it is interpreted. And often distorted."
Prof Wakhungu spoke from her experience as a technocrat who served inside a political system. As Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Natural Resources, her reference points were never personalities, they were constitutional obligations.
"When you are sworn into office, you are not sworn into a person. You are sworn into the Constitution."
That clarity guided difficult decisions, including the national ban on plastic bags, which met significant resistance.
"Every Kenyan has a right to a clean and healthy environment. Once you remember that you have a mandate and responsibility to the Kenyan people, the roadmap is there."
Devolution, she recalled, created new centres of power, not all of them ready for what that meant.
"Governors thought they were running sovereign states," she said with a light laugh.
"But the Constitution was clear; equity mattered."
What stayed with her most, though, was not the systems but the people. "Kenyans are brilliant. This country is blessed with some of the most brilliant minds I have seen anywhere in the world. I managed because I consulted widely, and acknowledged that leadership is not solitary."
Earning the space, and holding others accountable
Brenda Mbathi was direct about the reality facing women in professional spaces. "You still have to perform beyond your male counterparts. That hasn't changed."
But she had no patience for shortcuts. "There is no shortcut. Boards, leadership spaces, and governance all require work. It all comes down to volunteering, showing up, and being consistent. Many of us here were in the trenches long before the titles came."
Catherine Mwangi, who was once Brenda's boss, knew exactly what she meant. "We earned our space in leadership. When I worked with Brenda, often we would work past midnight and show up the next morning. Because systems needed to be put in place, and things needed to move."
Robyn Emerson pushed the conversation further. "Why can't we red-card women who fail?" she asked. "Equality also means accountability. Representation without performance does not serve us."
When the conversation turned to women in electoral politics, Catherine was frank.
"Politics is brutal," she said. "It takes a very brave woman to offer herself." She once considered running for office. What came back were not conversations about policy but warnings, about insults, violence, and the invasion of her private life.
"And I began to understand why so many capable women choose not to run."
"There are not enough role models in the political space. Without them, young women see politics as punishment."
Betty named the structures that produce this reality. "To understand women's rights, you must understand them as political," she said.
Numbers alone, she argued, do not equal influence, across the continent, women's representation has often failed to translate into real power.
"Where women have influence is where feminist movements are strong." She pointed to Namibia and South Africa. What is needed, she said, is not token inclusion but the dismantling of systems that reward loyalty over competence and silence over courage.
"If Africa is going to rise," Gina added, "it will rise on the backs of its women. We are the continent's most valuable asset, and we have not even begun to tap what we hold." The rest of the room nodded.
Leadership not synonymous with politicians
Helen Gichohi reframed the conversation with a simple observation. "We have made leadership synonymous with politicians," she said. "That is a mistake."
Her years in conservation had shown her that leadership is often about persistence, returning to rooms that dismissed you, speaking when told to stay quiet, holding on to the right answer even when no one is ready to hear it. "Substance wins eventually," she said quietly.
Patricia Gathuri raised faith, not a subject that often surfaces in leadership conversations, but one she felt could not be ignored.
"Faith should make leaders more accountable, not more untouchable," she said.
"If belief does not produce humility, then it has failed its purpose."
Sheena Raikundalia agreed, but pushed further. "We cannot talk about leadership in Africa without talking about faith. But we must talk about it honestly. Faith has been used to empower women and to constrain them too. Both truths must coexist."
The trust deficit between generations
As the afternoon went on, the conversation moved to young people and whether intergenerational dialogue is genuine or merely appearance.
Lanji Ouko Awori spoke plainly. "When young people are brought to the table, it is usually for optics or campaign strategy. There is no real role for us. No one listens to what we say. It comes off as suggestions rather than things that can be put into policy." She paused. "What is happening now with intergenerational dialogue is there is no trust. No one believes the ideas will be used."
Betty offered a different model, a feminist-led organisation founded by a former African Union youth envoy that does not wait to be invited anywhere. It builds its own table and invites others to come.
"They convene us. They set the dress code, pink and yellow. They send a letter: dear so-and-so, we would like you to come and speak about this. They make you pay to attend." She laughed.
"How empowered is that? They set their own agenda." The message was clear: "Don't wait to be invited. Set yourself up and invite us. Tell us what you want to talk about. The ones who are interested in real change will come."
Give first, lead further
Gina reflected on this year's International Women's Day theme, ‘Give to Gain.’ "We gain the most when we give first," she said. "When women support other women, corridors open."
For her, generosity is not sacrifice, it is strategy. "Ambition will take you forward, but generosity will determine the distance you travel."
The younger women in the room had listened throughout, absorbing decades of experience shared openly and without gatekeeping. It was a masterclass, offered freely.
As the afternoon drew to a close, a cake was brought out, quietly, almost without announcement, to honour Villoo Nowrojee, now in her 80s, on her birthday. Tears followed, of joy, of gratitude, of shared history. It was a moment that captured what Beyond the Ballot ultimately argues: that leadership is human before it is institutional, relational before it is rhetorical, and enduring only when anchored in trust.
The women lingered, reluctant to leave. The sense in the room was unmistakable: this was not an ending but a continuation. Conversations that began decades ago, struggles still unfinished, a future that will demand leadership beyond applause, beyond performance, and indeed, beyond the ballot.
When you see a woman appointed to a leadership position, what do you expect from her?
1. Joy Nyambura Gichuhi, student, Machakos County
Joy Nyambura Gichuhi, student, Machakos County.
I would expect her to be loud not only in voice but also in action. I'd love to have a loud woman as a leader. This means that society will depict her as annoying but that will mean that what she's advocating is being heard. All the loud women who came before are the reason as to why we enjoy rights the way we do today.
2. Gor Ogutu, Corporate Strategy Consultant based in Nairobi
Gor Ogutu, a corporate strategy consultant based in Nairobi.
Anytime a woman is appointed to a leadership position, I expect them to redefine leadership spaces; injecting new and refreshing ideas that scare conventional thinking. In a world where normal is everywhere; the leaders who will actually get the most done are those who prefer to re-imagine day-to-day realities in their operational environment.
3. Joylyne Kinya, housekeeper, Meru County
Joylyne Kinya, Meru County.
I believe that any leader, man or woman needs to hear what the workers are saying. Theirs is to lead but the people who really do the work and the ones below them. If she listens to our problems, we can fix things together. I also expect her to be strong because being a leader is not easy and people may test her. If this happens, I don’t expect her to back down. She needs to be confident and make the final call.
4. Ian Njane, International Relations graduate from Nairobi County
Ian Njane, an international relations graduate, Zetech University.
I expect something different from the way leadership has traditionally been done. I don’t want her to simply blend in with the old guard. I expect her to bring fresh perspectives, to lead not by following old norms, but by creating new ones that reflect her vision, values and unique approach. I also expect her to be a pillar, a living example of what’s possible, inspiring young girls in villages and towns across the country to dare to dream big. I expect her to mentor the next girl, to share the lessons she’s learned, to champion the opportunities and tools that helped her rise and to open doors so the next generation doesn’t have to fight the same battles she did.
Prof Chris Odindo, National Research Fund artificial intelligence lead architect
Prof Chris Odindo, the National Research Fund artificial intelligence lead architect, during an interview at Serena Hotel in Nairobi on November 4, 2025.
There was a time when women in the boardroom or politics seemingly strove to exhibit ‘manly’ qualities like toughness and in readiness for the harsh super competitive male-dominated business or politics arenas. Nowadays things have somewhat changed and when I see a woman in leadership, especially in business, I expect the same standards as male leaders but look for her to lead with a perspective that only someone who has had to navigate systemic hurdles can possess: a leadership style that is empathetic. But I also expect them to be unapologetically resilient because let’s face it, reaching a leadership position in Kenya is not easy where we have the legal requirement for women on boards. The reality is that women still have to fight for those seats. It is rather unfortunate that the Constitution provides the right to top positions, but our cultural outlook still treats it as a favour for women. There can also be unfair expectations that she must perform exceptionally well to justify her role.
