Gerald Macharia is a Vice President, the Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, and the Country Director in Kenya for the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). He joined CHAI in 2005 as Country Director for Kenya, starting up the CHAI Kenya office before taking on the additional regional leadership role in 2010. As Regional Director, his responsibilities include overseeing operations in Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Mr. Macharia began his career in the private sector in marketing management with a number of multi-national corporations. He spent three years working in global marketing with the Colgate Palmolive company before entering the financial services sector and serving as CEO of Faulu Kenya, one of East Africa’s largest microfinance institutions. During his time with Faulu Kenya, Mr. Macharia grew the organization from a small NGO program to one of the region’s best and most profitable microfinance in a period of five years. Mr. Macharia is credited with innovative work with the Vodafone Group to design and pilot the world-famous and award-winning M-Pesa money transfer system that has blazed the way for mobile money systems throughout the world; he helped pilot and refine the system towards its successful rollout in Kenya. He also helped to float Africa’s first microfinance corporate bond on the Nairobi stock exchange in 2005, raising US$7 million for the expansion of Faulu Kenya’s microfinance business.
Mr. Macharia graduated magna cum laude from Kenyatta University, and earned a postgraduate diploma in marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK, as well as a MBA from the Edinburgh Business School in the UK and an additional MBA from Kenya’s Moi University School of Business & Economics. He is also an alumnus of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business Program of Strategy & Organization.
Mr. Macharia has previously served as the Vice President of the Association of Microfinance Institutions in Kenya, board member of the Africa Microfinance Network, Governing Council, member of the Kenya Institute of Management and the Marketing Society of Kenya and is a life member of the Institute of Economic Affairs in Kenya. He also serves as board member of Kenya’s government-owned Micro Enterprise Support Program Trust.