"....ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." - John . F. Kennedy.
Ory Okollor is a transparency activist, a former policy manager, Africa for Google, a Harvard trained lawyer and blogger. She is a co-founder of Ushahidi ('testify' or 'witness' in Swahili), a revolutionary free open source platform for crowdsourcing crisis information. Ushahidi enables journalists, citizen and eyewitnesses all over the world to report incidences of violence through Google Maps, mobile-Email, and text messages. It has since been adapted for other purposes such as 'monitoring elections and tracking pharmaceutical availability' and has been used in a number of other countries like India, Mexico, Haiti and Eastern Congo and Washington D.C for traffic issues. She is the World Economic Forum (WEF) global young leader, mother of three and currently, a Director of Investments at Omidyar Network.
As a director of Investments for Omidyar's government transparency, Ory makes it her mission not to give aid but to support African entrepreneurs and citizens in building their own societies.
"I care for the World I live and want to have an impact." She says in one of her interviews, with a mindset like this, it's no wonder that Ory rejected a mouthwatering job offer she got from D. C. law firm back in the United States in 2007 after her law degree in 2005, to come back home to fight for more accountability, and transparency in the Kenyan government giving hope of better life to millions.
Born in 1977, in Kenya, into a relatively poor family, she was routinely thrown out of school because her parents couldn't afford fees but today held a B.A degree in Political science from University of Pittsburgh and a J.D from Harvard law school. Ory lives in Johannesburg with her husband and three children. She lost her father to AIDS in 1999.
Prior to co-founding Ushahidi, Ory founded Mzalendo ('Patriot' in Swahili), a website that helps Kenya's electorate monitor the activities of the Members of Parliament. The site closely monitors every bill, every speech and every Member of Parliament who passes through Kenya's Parliament, hence promoting transparency and accountability in the Kenya's government.
She resigned as director of Ushahidi in 2010 when Eric Schmidt of Google offered her a management job at Google, Ory saw the offer as an opportunity to do more for her people and Africa at large, for the job entails, expanding internet space in Africa, and making it affordable, also getting more Africans online especially the youths, and making sure they have contents available online that will help them re-shape their future, it's a bigger picture, so in 2011, Ory took up the job.
Ory aside her job, is a frequent speaker at conferences including World Economic Forum, Mobile Web Africa, Monaco Media Forum, TED, and others, where issues ranging from the role of young people in reshaping the future of Africa, to the role of technology in Africa and also to citizen journalism, this, she does despite her already busy schedule as a working mother and wife.
While in law school, she interned with the World Bank's Department of Institutional Integrity and worked as a summer associate at Covington and Burling, Washington D.C. She has also in the past, worked as a legal consultant for NGOs and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
"Breathes there the man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land." - Walter Scott.
LESSON: We can have a better society if each can contribute or bring in what he/she can to the good of the society, if we, in addition to what we love to do, add, 'love to impact on lives in my world.'
