appearance
Rose Motori: CEO after getting bolder and taking life head on
Friday, July 21, 2023
Rose Motori is the Managing Director for East Africa of the International Branch. photo | Swimming pool
After Captain Koki Mutungi of Kenya Airways went to her high school to give a talk, all the girls she knew wanted to be pilots. “
“There was no other dream because nobody talked to us. I don’t remember anything else I wanted to be,” says Rose Muturi. You didn’t become a pilot.
Instead, she studied Statistics and Computer Science at JKUAT, a Diploma in Information Technology and an Executive MBA at Strathmore Business School before entering Financial Services. (Standchart, Chase Bank, Tala, Housing Finance).
She now runs the International branch as the Managing Director for East Africa.
Where did you grow up?
Ayani is in Kibera. I had a fairly uneventful childhood, growing up around many communities because they were so cosmopolitan.
At school, we mostly spoke Swahili and pockets of English. Before that my mother tongue was at home. So, a very stable childhood.
What do you want for yourself in the future?
I want to sit in a hammock on my farm in Diani (chuckling). We have a farm in Diani where we grow fruits. So I would like to spend time with our seven dogs, and see, what these dogs can do after training.
I don’t intend to do things that stress you out, where you’re thinking, oh my gosh, my balance sheet and core capital and so forth. This is in the future.
Right now I can do this and I’m excited about it but in the future I just want to do fruit growing. We grow mangoes, dragon fruit, apples, papayas and there are quite a few.
Are you planting because you love it or is it just a business?
So my husband loves farming. He is the type who knows the scientific names of plants. I learned a lot from him. If you look at our YouTube feed, you’ll see a lot of YouTube farming hacks.
This is what we see a lot. When you start to see the crops coming out, or the fruits, you’re like, well, it’s not that bad. it is fun. So I became more and more interested in cultivation because of him.
What’s with the seven dogs?
I used to be afraid of dogs when I was little. When I was younger, a dog chased me. Knowing what I know now, maybe the dog just wanted to play but I thought he was chasing me so I was running for my life.
Since then I’ve been like dogs, no way. Then during Covid, one of our neighbors who had dogs got a litter of puppies and one of them was very sick, near death. We asked him to sell it to us.
That dog lived and taught us a lot. She taught us something new every morning. Dogs will give you that. They are so excited to see you every morning and every evening. So from there, we are now starting to see that they are easy to train.
Then we got a 2nd, 3rd dog and just went crazy, spiraled out of control… like we were really out of control, just getting that many dogs. We have seven now. We have a German Shepherd, Boerboel, Great Dane, Rottweiler and then we have three Kenyan Shepherds.
Kenyon patrons. Ha! What is your dog and why?
Boerboel. Because he is very beloved to me. I think maybe because when she was so young, I was the only one around.
So when other people do anything, that person will go with me wherever I go. And it’s very big. Therefore, people are afraid of him, but in secret he is a very docile creature. Love her.
What did you learn about yourself through dogs?
The dogs wake up and go about their day. They don’t even care about their appearance. They don’t say, “Oh, am I fat today?”
They just don’t care. They are dogs. It feeds your feelings if you are feeling sad or feeling excited. The dogs are moving. “So you weren’t happy with me today because I chewed your shoe.”
Tomorrow they wake up, they say, ‘Hey, can we play? Can we hang out? Are we still friends?’ Dogs don’t cling to things.I learned from dogs not to take things too seriously.
Sometimes I ask myself, is it worth getting so angry or is it worth worrying about a specific problem? A year or six months from now, does that matter? No, it won’t. And you move on.
If you were to look at your life holistically, are there certain parts that you would want to adjust or skip altogether?
(Silence) I wish I had been more daring at first. Right now, I’m the type that if people are queuing, I’ll go straight to the front of another queue and ask what I need to ask, let them take me back.
I’m not ashamed of being told, “Aah.” come back there (go back there). When I was younger, I would queue up in the wrong place, afraid to ask if it was the right queue.
Now I challenge the status quo because I have no shame. What’s the worst thing that could happen? On a personal level? I’ve been through some personal stuff, which I wish I didn’t get into, but that was during the post-election violence.
But it also taught me not to be materialistic because whatever you have today can be exchanged. And that made a big difference. So I am not attached to material things at all.
Can you talk about that or is it too personal?
Well, it was shocking. A crowd of people came to our house with stones, guns and machetes and asked us to leave.
Some of these people were our neighbors, people we knew. I remember we hid in a neighbor’s house. They took everything from our house. We crept out at dawn and walked away from the only home, the only life we’d known.
Rose Motori is the Managing Director for East Africa of the International Branch. photo | Swimming pool
I remember I only had my national ID in my pocket. Everyone walked away, literally with nothing, and so we had to start from scratch. That was a very interesting period because even though we missed all that people go through, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and we got a lot of help.
In the end, I was like, Wow, all those things that I used to hold on to, didn’t really matter. The good thing is we got away with our lives. But it was a very scary night, one of the longest nights ever.
How do you think this affected you?
I don’t like loud noises at all! I also don’t like crowds of people running, whether it’s for fun or not. I can run marathons, but when I get to the stadium I’m like, well, that’s a little loud. Makes me nervous.
How did all this affect your parents?
It happened, especially my dad because he felt like he had worked so hard all those years to make it all go away in one night.
Now if I said to him, “Dad, let’s do something, something long-term” he wouldn’t be so interested. I think in his mind he’s like, why, why should I expend my energy doing this when I did this almost 30 years ago and lost it all? I think it affected him more than it did my mom.
Do you have children?
I’m in a blended family – so there are two teens with my husband. When you are around teenagers, you realize that you are boring (chuckle). You never see them even though they are in the house.
You wonder if our conversations aren’t exciting? When we say, hey, let’s go out, maybe it’s dinner or any family outing, they get excited but get bored pretty quickly.
So we learned to live with it. I think we were like that when we were teenagers. We just wanted to be in our own space.
What’s the scariest thing you’ve probably done?
Let’s see (pause). I think getting into the marriage I’m in right now. I had many questions, many blind spots, because this was someone who already had a family.
I took a gamble because I didn’t know how it was going to work. I’ve had to deal with three sets of family members – his family, his ex-family, and now my family. It was a good decision, but one that scared me for a while.
What lessons are there?
I’ve learned that everyone has their own life to lead. You don’t owe anyone any explanations or excuses, at least if you are responsible for your actions.
When do you find yourself vulnerable?
I can tell I can be very vulnerable when I answer correctly when I’m with my husband because he knows me 100 percent.
He can even predict what I will do or say. We’ve been together since 2011, but we got married in 2016. What did you learn about marriage?
Respect is more useful in marriage than love. Sure, you love each other but you have to respect each other. I would say we have both. We run business together, share ideas.
What is the hardest question to ask yourself at this time in your life?
So, what will people remember and does it matter? Did I have an effect? This bothers me a lot because I want to be someone who makes a difference. I want to enrich life. I want to care when all is said and done. I think about that a lot now.
Is there anything you are trying to ignore?
Yes, I take myself seriously. This one that I want to get rid of because sometimes I’m going to push myself, I’m like, this has to work and maybe it’s not the end of the world. So I need to relax a bit.
What is your extravagance now?
travel. We love it, we enjoy it, and we aim to do it. I’d rather spend money on travel than buy something to save for the future.
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