Waithera Kuria has joined Telkom Kenya as a Senior PR Specialist, over 4 years since she moved from formal employment to set up her own PR and Communications outfit, ProAktiv Consult.
Although she’s yet to update her professional profile to indicate her new work station, it seems Ms Kuria joined the telco at the beginning of March and was among those involved in media coordination during the launch of Telkom Kenya’s mobile money transfer platform, TKash, in mid March.
(TOP: Waithera Kuria, the PR exec who’s joined Telkom Kenya as Senior PR Specialist. Photo: Cropped from Facebook image).
Moving to Telkom Kenya means that Kuria has reunited Kris Senanu, the telco’s head of enterprise division, who joined the firm from Access Kenya (recently rebranded Internet Solutions or IS).
We say ‘reunited’ because during this time, Kuria – through her outfit ProAktiv Consult – was the PR and communications consultants for Access Kenya, where Senanu was a long-serving member of the C-Suite, meaning that she’s Ms Kuria’s PR client. ProAktiv had a long relationship with Internet Solutions, and was even in charge of PR during the IT firm’s rebranding from Access Kenya to IS early this year.
Senanu moved to to Telkom Kenya in August 2016 as the MD of its Enterprise Division from Access Kenya where he had been the Group deputy MD from 2008.
In mid May 2016, we had reported that Senanu had tendered his resignation at Access Kenya. At the time, sources had indicated that he would take a job at the Two Rivers Complex, a statement which later turned out to be untrue.
Ms Kuria began her career in the PR industry in 2008 at Ogilvy. She’d serve there for almost 4 years before leaving in late 2011 to join Save the Children, an NGO, as the information and communications coordinator.
She later had a short stint as an account manager at H&K Strategies till early 2014 when she moved own to set up ProAktiv Consult where she is the Managing Partner and PR Lead. The firm lists Internet Solutions, Kenswitch and ICT Authority among its clients.
With Kuria moving back to employment, it remains unclear whether ProAktiv still has (or will still handle) Internet Solutions PR account, a situation made more uncertain by the fact that Emily Kinuthia, who was the firm’s head of marketing and communications, left to join NIC Bank.
Those in the know say that Ms Kuria and Kinuthia had developed a rapport and worked seamlessly on the Internet Solutions account. Ms Kinuthia was recently replaced by Rodgers Wabito (as the communications officer) while the marketing portfolio is being handled by a different person altogether.
At Telkom Kenya, Kuria now reports to George Mlaghui, the telco’s current head of communications, who, interestingly, served as Access Kenya’s communications assistant from late 2009 to early 2011.
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