“I have held a torch in one hand and hope in the other.”

Angela Nguku is the Founder and Executive Director of White Ribbon Alliance Kenya, a global thought leader on reproductive, maternal and newborn health, a women’s wellbeing advocate and a technical expert. She is a trained midwife whose leadership was formed in real spaces of shortage, where a torch was sometimes the only light and prayer was sometimes the only backup. Those experiences taught her a hard truth: women and newborns do not experience systems on paper.

They experience them in minutes, in pain, in distance, in fees, in disrespect, in delays and in whether someone shows up. Angela leads White Ribbon Alliance Kenya through the Ask Listen Act Power Approach, grounded in listening to over 3.5 million women and girls across Kenya. Listening to over 3.5 million women and girls has surfaced a hard truth: pregnancy and childbirth now sit inside a polycrisis. Women described climate stress, hunger, poverty, displacement, insecurity and health systems stretched to breaking point. Mothers need care, dignity and support now, yet systems often move at the speed of policy cycles, budget approvals and procurement timelines. 

Her work focuses on respectful maternity care and self care, women’s economic empowerment, transformative leadership, community organizing and local action. She is building Action Villages in underserved communities to respond to what women have asked for. Action Villages are women led spaces where mothers come to heal, learn and earn then take practical steps back home for their health, dignity and livelihoods. She is also strengthening routes for adolescent mothers to return to school and rebuild their futures with dignity.