Eva Muraya is CEO of Brand Strategy and Design Limited a regional integrated marketing communications consultancy firm that offers various services including brand audit and management, internal brand engagement and advertising, public relations. She holds over twenty years of diverse brand strategy development skill and experience. She was nominated by Women Inspiration and Enterprise Africa (WIE) as one of Africa’s Top 60 Most Influential Women. In October, 2008, she was a co-recipient of the inaugural Goldman Sachs Fortune Global Leadership Award.
She was an award nominee at the Pan African Invent and Innovate Conference in Accra – Ghana in 2005, sponsored by the International Finance Corporation. Eva co-found Color Creations Ltd and regionally, Color Creations Ltd was the only woman led top 10 finalist business out of 451 SME companies drawn from East and Central Africa in the 2007 Legatum Pioneers of Prosperity Business Award held in Rwanda and presided over by President Paul Kagame. Eva was selected in 2006 by the US State Department to represent Kenya in a premier U.S. government-sponsored program dubbed the Fortune/State Department International Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. She serves on the Vital Voices African Board of Advisers.
She also serves as the Chair of Zawadi Africa Educational Program, the Kenya Association of Women Business Owners (KAWBO), and the Board of the Nairobi Women’s Hospital and is a Board of Advisor for USIU’s Chandaria School of Business. Eva is a fellow of the fourth class of the Africa Leadership Initiative in East Africa and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
Eva Muraya attended the Alliance Girls High School in 1986. Upon her graduation, she trained in the United States International University, Nairobi, Kenya and earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Journalism and Marketing. From the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, she earned diplomas in Marketing, Advertising, Public Relations, Sales and Management. From the Marketing Society of Kenya, a Certificate in Marketing, and from the Strathmore Business School in Nairobi, Kenya, an Advanced Management Program (AMP). She also acquired a joint certification between IESE Business School, Spain and Strathmore Business School, Kenya.
Advice to women entrepreneurs
We need to quit this ‘microwave results’ mentality. Media has not reminded us enough of the value of working hard. There is nothing you will gain from not working hard. If you want to be successful, then you have to work hard and whilst at it, would also a lot help if you work smart!.
Dignity and employment
Business creation provides that opportunity for people to have gainful employment, and people can therefore support themselves by providing shelter and food and health for their families. I’ve seen that through my business. We begin to say no to poverty and begin to redeem the dignity of the citizens by virtue of creating business opportunity.
Creating opportunities in business enterprise
I think the most sustainable way is for opportunity to be created, so that people can engage in enterprise… If you had employed five people, if your business grows, then you will then employ twelve and eighteen and thirty, and a hundred. It’s happened in my business experience. A hundred families are being supported by Color Creations to date, directly. I haven’t even begun to talk about the families supported by the creditors and suppliers that I work with, or the other stakeholders in my business. That’s just one business.
State versus private sector
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The state has its role in creating a more enabling environment, but I think private sector has the bigger role in applying the best business principles so that growth of enterprise is exponential, and it grows and grows, and we begin to drive the bottom of the pyramid the other way around … because it is possible. It has worked in other societies and it can work for Africa.
Women in Business
We can do a lot more to involve women in business, they’re the closest in providing a solution concerning education, health nutrition, shelter.
FedEx Kenya
I was capacitated to build FedEx as a new brand in Kenya. I was tasked as sales and marketing manager to grow the brand in the region. By the end of the eight years we had grown the brand from a little in-bound service to a regional brand covering five African countries managed out of Nairobi. That was a great achievement. I quit because I had done my cumulative 15 years in the corporate world and I needed a new challenge.
Stepping out
I knew I preferred to invest myself in a space that would also provide the opportunity for innovation that wouldn’t be as possible in the multinational context. I needed something that would completely free me to run the nine yards as fast as I could. That is why I decided to co-found Color Creations Ltd, a merchandise producing company. It has a regional outlook today.
