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Tei Mukunya Oundo

Co-Founder & Executive Director, Naturelock

Tei has inspired many upcoming entrepreneurs as a champion for preserving good health and nutrition which is expressed by the choice of products in her company portfolios. Her continued push to curb food loss and food waste has led to international recognition by revolutionaries like Jamie Oliver (UK) and Selina Juul (Denmark).

At NatureLock Foods, Tei and her team are creating Nutritious precooked and dried “fast food legumes” that are a solution for everyday use at home, for school feeding programmes, catering kitchens for factories and for emergency relief. In addition, NatureLock is fighting food waste throughout Africa by preserving fresh produce naturally into tasty, nutritious and affordable foods for all. NatureLock is revolutionizing the supply chain by saving fresh produce, which otherwise would have gone to waste.

Tei founded Azuri Health Ltd in 2010, with the objective of making premium fruit and porridges, whilst making a contribution to fighting extreme post-harvest loss, particularly in the fruit sector. Tei’s passion as an entrepreneur and her leadership acumen spearheaded Azuri to its successful strategic growth and development, transitioning into the Kenyan/Dutch partnership that is NatureLock Foods, today.

Tei received her M.B.A. from the United States International University Africa (USIU-A) in Nairobi, Kenya and is a prestigious Borlaug Fellow of Michigan State University. She is a current Cornell University Fellow in the SMART program. She holds a Marketing Society of Kenya Practitioners Course Award of Excellence.

She has vast experience in training and consultancy where for six years she worked with development organizations such as GIZ, SNV, ACDA-VOCA, EU-CDTF and USAID on capacity building, Business Development and Marketing for women and youth. She developed Value Addition and Value Chain processes for farmer groups before establishing her company Azuri.

Prior to her consulting work, she started her corporate career straight from university, at British American Tobacco as a Management Trainee where she served in marketing roles including Trade Marketing, Brand Marketing and Marketing Operations for Kenya and the Horn of Africa markets.

Tei serves on the Board of africon GmbH, Germany and is a Director of Midas Golden Academy in Kenya.