#RareIsChange

Ndey Fatou Njie is a graduate of Marina International School and Derby College (UK). She is currently a law student at University of The Gambia and the founder of Tiga. As a frequent swimmer, she realized that there is a gap in the market for locally handmade swimwear that fit comfortably using beautiful African fabric. Ms. Njie started making swimwear samples to test the market, which responded favourably to the demand for African fabric swimwear. Recognizing the interest and potential in her products, Ms. Njie launched Tiga. In addition to launching Tiga, Ms. Njie is amongst the top 10 finalist for the Empretec Women in Business Award 2018. She is also an International Visitors Leadership Program Alumni 2017 and was the winner of GoTG’s Ministry of Youth and Sports’ “Youth of the Month 2016”; winner of the Youth Empowerment Project first pitching competition 2017; winner of the BUSY competition video competition 2017; and the winner of Gambia Investment & Export Promotion Agency’s most Innovative Business of the Year 2017. She also got nominated for New African Woman on the Rise (Next Generation) by UK’s New African Woman Magazine in 2017. Her work has been featured on platforms such as the United Nations, Female One Zero, International Trade Centre. Ms. Njie also supports charities such as One Heart Gambia, Young Mums of the Gambia, and Jaeghan Cole Memorial Foundation. She is a member of Women’s International Networking Group, TAF Club Ten, and Global Shaper Hub Banjul.

Kimberly Francis is from a small island in the Caribbean known as Grenada. She was born in Trinidad but resides in Grenada and is the Co- founder of K&L Products and Services. As a cleaner, she came to the realisation that there is a problem with conventional cleaning products. Kimberly started to do research on said products and realised that using these types of products was akin to smoking twenty cigarettes a day. This later resulting in the onset of diseases such as asthma and other lung problems. Recognising the potential of her products, she launched K&L Products and Services in 2017. In addition to this Kimberly is amongst the twenty finalists for the Youth Innovative Challenge 2017-2018 funded by the Dubi Expo. As a finalist, she won the award for an environmentally safe project. In 2018 she launched her first cleaning product.

As a senior software engineer, Rana has global responsibility for the tech and entrepreneurship fields. She's passionate about building new commercial tech companies that tackle the biggest social challenges in the developed world. Excited by technology, Rana's driven by the desire to use her skills, experience, and energy to have a personal impact on the social issues that matter.

She used to be the Product Development and Women’s Inclusivity Manager at Mercy Corps in Gaza. Rana has global responsibility for the attraction, engagement, development, and experience of Mercy Corps most important asset - its people. She championed its mission ‘helping people build secure, productive and just communities.’ playing a critical role in enabling the organisation ‘to commit to achieving demonstrable impact for stakeholders, using their feedback to innovate, learn and improve.’ With a growing employee base, Rana enabled Mercy Corps to scale, while working on the powerful elements that have made the organization so successful in gender equality to date.

Rana brings 9 years of people leadership experience across multiple industries, geographies, and scale of businesses. Before joining Mercy Corps, Rana served as Product Manager of Microsoft first lab in Palestine and a leader in the outsourcing industry in different Saudi Companies.

Rana has been working as a backend developer since 2010 and has experience in establishing two startups one for artificial intelligence software applications and the other for business organisations software environments. She established and led the Palestine Code Academy at Gaza Sky Geeks in partnership with Founders and Coders, she is also the founder of the first women-only coding club in the area.

As a youth programs’ lead, Rana’s passion is around culture. She has the opportunity to work alongside Angel Hack, Iridescent, PCRF and Christian Aid, all is non-profit youth empowerment and culture space. She is an advisor to several young girls, as well as a mentor to many startups in business analysis and product development.

Rana holds a BSc in Computer Engineering and an MBA from Islamic University of Gaza, Palestine. She is working now on exploring new markets to start her new social enterprise to bridge the gap in diversity in tech from different angels. The mission of this enterprise is to unlock new opportunities for people in hard-hit places by globalisation and automation focusing on the women in minority communities by upskilling them to be qualified enough to join the tech industry.

Noor Mo’alla is a tech for good and development expert that has extensive experience in driving and delivering data and tech-driven, highly focused, goal-oriented programmes across multiple geographies. Noor is dedicated to using and developing technology to solve society's most pressing issues and believes that climate change can be addressed by using AI to support community-led development responses.

Mrs. Sian Cuffy-Young has been involved in the environmental field for over twelve (12) years. She is no stranger to challenge as her experience stems from the waste and mining sectors – two fields many shy away from. She also has a wealth of experience in environmental management systems and education and has received training in behaviour change through the method of community-based social marketing with the University of Tennessee. She is a Colorado Certified Environmental Educator, Speaker and Principal Consultant of Siel Environmental Services Limited. One of our honoured accomplishments was when she was selected to be a Fulbright Hubert Humphrey Fellow placed at Cornell University, one of the United States’ top academic institutions.

​There she specialised in the areas of quarry land reclamation, community relations, policy development and environmental planning; a first for any fellow from the Caribbean. Her academic qualifications include a B Sc (Hons) degree Double major in Physics and Masters in Environmental Engineering from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Campus. She is driven by her passion and truly takes her journey of social entrepreneurship to heart. A sentence which truly puts her work in perspective is “Remember it is not always about doing things better but sometimes we simply need to do better things”. She now works with organisations to put environmental programmes and campaigns together focused on behaviour change and works with land developers as the bridge to acquiring the necessary environmental applications they would need from the Environmental Authority. She is from Trinidad and Tobago.