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Eunie Khimulu Nyakundi
ECOSYSTEM MARKETING LEADER NORTH, EAST AND WEST AFRICA IBM
Eunie consciously invest her energy, positivity and curiosity for an in-depth understanding of her business to deliver value to all whom she engages. Her professional journey has earned her leadership experience in technology, insurance, marketing and business development over the last nineteen years.
In her present station, Eunie is responsible for the IBM ecosystem marketing strategy and execution in 35 countries across Africa to deliver on the business outcomes driven by data, yet agile and client centric. Her role also involves collaborating with different business units and other disciplines on the creation and optimization of the customer journey through route-to-market design and execution to meet market capacity, enabling the local teams and partner ecosystem in demand generation.
Before Joining IBM, Eunie served in the C-Suite at Resolution Insurance head of marketing. Here, she was responsible for developing and executing Marketing, Public Relations and Business Development Strategies that enabled the company achieve its revenue targets across East Africa and have high brand equity in the insurance industry. Eunie was part of the senior management team involved in corporate strategy development and monitoring.
She established the marketing function that enabled the insurance firm to create and sustain its brand awareness, recognition, acceptance and preference within a short span of time. Sales grew ten-folds while the firm retained positive relationships and developed new business with all their customers and business partners. To date, many clients chose Resolution, thanks to the brand building blocks Eunice created.
Positive brand positioning of Resolution Health as a medical insurance provider and seamless rebrand and re-positioning to Resolution Insurance as a general business insurer through consistent brand engagements and member reward programmes she initiated gained not only customer confidence but foreign investor confidence, earning a ‘Marketing Initiative of the Year Insurance Awards’. Eunie also launched, developed and distributed nine editions of “The Resolution” magazine that consolidated the firm’s communication and branding strategies.
Eunie served as Account Director at Ogilvy & Mather between 2004 and 2007 where her major role was client creative needs assessment, that involved strategic thinking, working with the creative and media departments, budget control and formulation of major agency recommendations. She was also responsible for the management and development of team members who handled major account portfolio that included who is who in global brands. Notable among these were Coca-Cola East & Central Africa Division (Sprite & Fanta), MultiChoice Kenya, Nestlé Foods (Brands Nestlé Drinking Chocolate and MILO), British American Tobacco (Brands: Rothmans, Royals and Viceroy, The Magadi Soda Company, Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB)and Econet Wireless Kenya.
Eunie completed her master’s degree at the young age of 21 years and has accumulated 19 years professional experience cross industry including tech, financial services, marketing and advertising in management and executive leadership roles.
This August marks her 5th year at the Hybrid Cloud & AI Technology leading provider for businesses and she remains extremely passionate on being a Tech Marketer. Within two years of being in the company she received IBM Smart Marketer Awards in the Middle East & Africa Summit for displaying subject matter expertise as well as delivery on business outcomes.
Her passion to share her learnings has led to her being invited as a key note speaker at regional innovation, digital, advertising, marketing and research forums. Diversity and inclusion are core to her and she has shared her experience as a motivational speaker at global brands inclusion forums.
Eunie is a mentor to the youth informally and formally over the last 4 years under the Kenya Ministry of ICT Presidential Digital Talent Programme for youth mentorship.
She leverages her combined skills of people, customer experience, and processes management to support businesses and societies thrive as part of their corporate governance. Her ethical behaviour and business principles, with the goal of creating long-term value and sustainability for all stakeholders is eminent in her Board experience transforming the Marketing Society of Kenya for seven years, serving at the Bible Society of Kenya for four years and currently in her second year serving on the Board of Hellen Keller International in Kenya.
Her response to a recent question on what she is intentional on in her career was, “I consciously invest my energy, positivity and curiosity for an in-depth understanding of my business to deliver value to all whom I engage”.
She holds a Master of Science in Management of Organizational Development and a Bachelor of Science in International Business Administration both from the United States International University (USIU) – Africa.
She was honoured in 2014 to receive the Rising Star Award for the Banking and Financial Services sector.
Eunie strives to continuously engage within her environment to make an impact. She loves to operate fast paced, embraces diversity and change as a positive challenge. She believes she needs to enjoy what she invests (not spends) her time on. “If I’m not happy with what I do, it means I’m not a happy person in life”. Her husband Adam and her are blessed with two sons, Sekai and Sean aged ten and six.
