Professional Experience:
I am currently the CEO for the New Forests Company managing the Uganda and Kenya business. The New Forests Company is a vertically integrated sustainable timber company with territories in Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and South Africa. I lead the business of the company managing it's P&L and driving revenue. I lead a strong team of professionals running over 20000 hectares of pine and eucalyptus Forests. My assignment in the New Forests Company was to build strong partnerships and business development with the electricity distribution companies in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, South Sudan and Rwanda. I also built partnerships with Telecommunication companies and logistics companies. I a strong team that worked together and moved like a herd of buffaloes. I managed costs downwards whiles increasing efficiency and productivity. Prior to the New Forests Company, I worked for Harvest Ltd a cut flower production and exporter in Kenya. I was the CEO having started my career there as the Production manager and growing through the ranks. I have been a hand on person and continue to be at the same time understanding the need to lead teams to success. At Harvest Ltd I was responsible for all production and sales of roses and summer flowers to international markets such as Russia, Sweden, France, Norway, Dubai, Holland, USA, Australia to name a few. During my tenure at Harvest, we were awarded the best fairtrade company in Africa by the Fair Trade Organisation in Bonn, Germany. We were also awarded the best flower quality producers in Amsterdam, Holland and also at the best growers award at the IFTEX show in Nairobi 3 times in a row. My pride at Harvest Ltd was developing rain water harvesting systems and tree planting programs. I also pride in developing a team that was well motivated and gave maximum results. With my leadership, Harvest Ltd grew from a 10 million stems per annum to over 50 million cut flower stems a year. We built 3 new farms from a greenfield including fund raising, design works, registering of legal and statutory requirements. A lot of community development was done seeing schools and toilets for clinics and schools being built. I managed the propagation of plants in nurseries and managed the irrigation and derivation of all crops.
Prior to Harvest Ltd, I working for the Langmeads Group in Chichester, England. I had worked for Langmeads Group during my internship but was called in on a management training programme after my convocation. This saw me rising quickly to a full time position as an assistant production manager and finally production manager. I started at Langmeads growing whole head lettuce such as iceberg and sweet romaine. I was later moved to a new project growing baby leaf salads. A lot of the work we were doing was new not only to the business but in the UK as a whole. We had to be extremely innovative and resilient as there were no examples to copy from. We designed our harvesting rig which is now a worldwide machine used