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Catherine Muraga: The sheng native driving Microsoft Africa engineering
Aug 29, 2024
There is a delightful deception to Catherine Muraga. She isn’t the person who bounds thunderously into a room or holds court. Her presence is soundless in a sort of seismic way.
She speaks softly, in featherlike strokes, soothingly even, as if words are a comforting hand on a conflicted back. But underneath that calmness (if you care enough to ask those who work with her) is an unmovable firmness, a ruthlessness to excellence.
“Don’t be fooled by her soft-spokenness,” someone who prefers to be anonymous warned. “She’s tough as four-inch nails. She doesn’t do half-baking; if she puts on the oven, you are all baking.”
An engineering director and Managing Director at Microsoft’s African Development Centre, she has been baking in many corporate kitchens.
A seasoned IT professional, she’s baked at Kenya Airways, Sidian Bank (Director of IT and operations), and more recently, at Stanbic Bank as Head of Engineering.
This interview happens at Microsoft’s Game Room, featuring a table tennis table and an Xbox console station, toys that Microsoft’s office boys love to commandeer. In that room, she looks like she belongs. Another metaphor, maybe. Who knows?
You were saying earlier that you want to learn how to write. Why?
Yes. So, back in the day, I wanted to learn how to write. I wanted to improve my storytelling, to tell the stories of how technology improves businesses and impacts customers. But how do I tell these stories without it being technical?
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