Personal Assistant of the Year Award

Winnie Kamuya is the CEO of International Renaissance Centre, Kenya. She is #1 International Best seller Author, founder of Women in Leadership (WIL) Conference in Africa and Personal Assistant of the year Award™ – Africa.
She is an inspiring transformational speaker, executive coach and mentor. She teaches on hacking confidence following the 3E framework: Exceptional, Extraordinary, and Excellent.

Taunya A. Lowe, PhD., national and international speaker, trainer, consultant and author named Amazon #1 Best Selling Author in the Business Leadership category for her book, Results Driven Organizations: The 4 Keys for a High-Performance Workplace.

Lowe, describes, and expands on the areas of strategy, leadership, teams, and creating customer experiences while directing readers toward identifying their organizational strengths and challenges such as dysfunctional teams, low productivity and high turnover. She sprinkles the chapters with stories of her own leadership challenges and lessons learned.

International Coordinator
Official and Key stakeholders within the Executive, Personal Assistants and Office Administrative Professionals Sector

Ann is an experienced administrative and email marketing virtual assistant professional. Her journey into the Virtual Assistant Industry began in 2018 after working in the corporate sector. Armed with a desire to monetize the administrative skills she had acquired while in employment, she founded Ythera VA. She has supported service-based entrepreneurs run their businesses efficiently without the overwhelm of managing back-end processes that distract them from their zone of genius and income generating activities.
Through Ythera VA, she offers custom support packages to her clients helping them achieve work/life balance and peace of mind through having an extra pair of hands to help run their business.
Ann is a mum, salsa dancer with a dream to own a sports motorbike who is passionate about building a community of Kenyan Virtual Assistants.

‘Malisema Thato Mokorosi is a proud citizen of the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. She resides in the capital city of Maseru with her husband and two beautiful daughters. She is Personal Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer of the Lesotho National Development Corporation and 2019 PAYA Winner.

She has been a Personal Assistant for over 20 years. Her career took charge long back in 1994 where she was employed as an Assistant Teacher for seven years and it was in 2000 when she joined the National University of Lesotho (NUL) as a Secretary. She stayed with NUL for 12 years. In those 12 years, it is worth noting that in 2004, she was crowned as the Secretary of the Year by the Lesotho Secretaries Association. To better herself in the field she then later joined the Institute of Development Management (IDM) to work as a Management Secretary and was further promoted to the rank of Personal Assistant to the Country Director. During her tenure as the Personal Assistant at IDM she was faced with a lot of challenges as she joined the organization during its restructuring. One of her responsibilities was also to man the Human Resources offices. After the employment of the Human Resources Manager she was then deployed to oversee procurement responsibilities. This dawned to her that she has reached the peak of her career as the array of responsibilities was extremely vast.

After exploring all the career avenues at IDM, she got an opportunity to join the Lesotho National Development Corporation in 2016 as a Personal Assistant to the then Head of Research and Planning and later to the Head of the newly established Unit of Development Finance. She had to diversity her skills to meet the demanding strategic objectives of the Unit. It is in 2019 when she was crowned the 2019 PAYA Winner by International Renaissance Centre in Kenya. She would also like to highlight that she took advantage with her winning and used it as a steppingstone to explore other opportunities in her career. It is in May this year when she got an opportunity to serve in the Chief Executive office.

She is a Professional Secretary & Licensed Counselling Psychologist, Author of 3 titles, 2019 PAYA Award Winner, As an experienced professional secretary, she is well-versed in many aspects of the secretarial function, having worked in various government Corporations and the public service in general. Successful with a wealth of experience in the secretarial professional for close to thirty years, she has people skills gained in office management and practice. She began her practice in Kenya Reinsurance Corporation as a temporary typist, before joining and working Kenya Broadcasting Corporation for seventeen years in various stations and departments. She has worked for different executives and senior staff during her time of service and witnessed the secretarial function evolve from the traditional secretary to Personal Assistant- the new Game Changer Assistant on the office block. Currently in Egerton University, she worked in the Faculty of Health Sciences before her transfer to the Vice chancellor’s office a privilege and opportunity which came her way after she won the most coveted PAYA 2019 AWARD.

She has authored three books, ‘The Inspired and Indispensable Secretary’, ‘The Biological Father Wound’ and ‘Bible Basics of Serving as an Usher in the Church’. Armored with two Higher Diplomas in Secretarial and Psychological counselling respectively, A Diploma in Business Management and recently completed Bachelor of Psychology with a First class Honours and a registered Masters student, she is ready to impact the world in the best way possible in her lifetime. She is a member of the Kenya National Secretaries Association and a Licensed and practicing Counselling Psychologist in Kenya, she possess a commitment and passion to Psychological Counselling training for mental health awareness and a reputation for ensuring complete customer satisfaction and excellence. Passionate about family, a wife, a mother and at the same time, a motivational speaker in various cycles of life.

Juma Ally Mshana, is a PhD candidate in ICT working with the Institute of Accountancy Arusha- Dar Campus as a Lecturer in Informatics. He worked before with the Institute of Judicial Administration Lushoto for fourteen (14) years from 2007 to August, 2021 as a lecturer. He has a wide range in research, consultancy and publications as an academician. He has published seven (7) peer reviewed articles in three different academic Journals (find more on Academia.edu website for easy reference). Mr. Mshana has attended several courses including teaching methodology, learning by doing basic skills in Project writing and management, basic skills in research, consultancy and publications that enable him to work independently with a very tight schedule.
Mr. Mshana as the academician has facilitated different trainings at the Institute and outside the institute. He trained stakeholders on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) methods in Morogoro Region including five Districts from 2019 to 2020 under FAO. Heal so facilitated Juvenile Justice Frontline Workers Trainings under UNICEF from 2017-2020. He also regularly trained people on ICT issues from 2010 To Date. Mr. Mshana also has been facilitating and supporting both students and academic staff on issues related to the uses of Google Applications including Google Meet and other applications as well as how to use video conferencing facilities at the Institute and practical uses of Zoom Application.