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Lizz Ntonjira

GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR AT AMREF

Lizz, (short for Elizabeth) is the author of one of the bestselling books in 2020 titled YOUTHCAN; an anthology of powerful, inspiring, and challenging stories from youths breaking barriers across Africa.

Lizz is a strategic communications and public affairs expert with extensive experience gained within a number of roles in the public, private and international development sectors spanning over 14 years. Her areas of expertise include but are not limited to strategic communications, brand development, project management, crisis management, policy facilitation, regulatory frameworks, youth advocacy, media management and outreach through electronic, print and social media, marketing, stakeholder engagements, government and public relations.

As the Global Communications Director at Amref, a position she has held since January 2019, Lizz holds a senior leadership role with the primary responsibility of leading and mentoring a capable communications team responsible for program communications, institutional messaging and strategic guidance for Africa, Europe and North America communication teams. The role develops and implements plans for successfully and continuously engaging colleagues worldwide with a shared vision aligned to the institutions corporate strategy and serves as a trusted partner to the group and senior leadership teams dealing with strategic issues as they emerge, to position Amref as a premier organisation for the advancement of health program interventions.

Before joining Amref, Ntonjira was Communication Manager in charge of Central, East and West Africa at IBM from November 2016. Located in Nairobi, Lizz lead external communication activities supporting business issues of major consequence to IBM and the business units in 25 sub-Saharan African countries in Central, East and West Africa as well as acted in a consulting capacity, providing communication advice and counsel to executive line management.

Lizz was also tasked with developing communication plans and strategies, collaborated on messaging architecture that helped IBM’s mission, and helped arm the sales and business partner organizations with messages and success stories that promoted IBM’s leadership in sub-Saharan Africa.

Lizz tour of duty in the past included serving at the Competition Authority of Kenya, a body established on August 1st, 2011 and charged with safeguarding the competition process, ensuring that consumers are protected from misleading and unfair market conduct among others. Further, it regulates anti-competitive business practices and advocates for effective markets that deliver superior value to customers, producers and investors.

Here, Lizz specific roles included: First, the development and implementation of a communication policy, strategy and plan for both internal and external stakeholders. The aforementioned documents facilitated the extensive publicity the Authority had been consistently gaining since she took up the role. She coordinated distribution of various news releases and media inquiries; oversaw planning for news conferences which resulted to the positive coverage of the Authority in the media.

Second, Lizz facilitated cooperative agreements and the signing of Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with other regulatory bodies both at a national and international space.

Third, Lizz acted as the public face of the authority and spokesperson on developments, plans and any incidents on both local and international forums; including responding to media inquiries and external stakeholders.

In a strategic communication duty, Lizz developed and launched new initiatives through support of World Bank to host an Annual Business Journalists forum as well as spearheaded an annual corporate social responsibility (CSR) essay writing competition initiative.

Lizz Ntonjira’s pursuit for higher education started at the Goethe Institute of Nairobi, where she read German, obtaining a Diploma in 2005. She then proceeded to the Catholic University of Eastern Africa at Karen to read Law, graduating with an LL. B degree in 2008.

She became Fellow in Public Management in 2015 from the Virginia Commonwealth University, before attending the prestigious Strathmore Business School between 2015 and 2018, graduating with a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Management.

Lizz then enrolled at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in 2017, obtaining the much-acclaimed Advanced Professional Diploma in Public Relations in 2018.

As a personal social responsibility and in giving back to the society, Ms Ntonjira founded The Lizz Ntonjira Network, a platform that provides innovative, engaging, interactive and tailored training and coaching for the youth. It was established in August 2019 with an objective of mentoring and training the youth for a rewarding professional and personal development journey.

Additionally, it provides collaborative development, mentoring and coaching sessions that make available business and career advisory for young people; starting from early career steps, which include youth development before later moving to providing business and personal branding to best leverage industry opportunities.