There comes a point in a career when the next step is not obvious. The title may be impressive. The salary may be comfortable. From the outside, everything may appear to be moving exactly as it should. Yet somewhere beneath the certainty sits an uncomfortable question: Is it time to stay, or is it time to move?
Mrs. Esther Waititu knows something about those moments.
After more than 25 years building a career across banking and technology, the financial services leader has navigated the promotions, pivots, uncertainties and difficult transitions that accompany professional growth. And when she took the stage as keynote speaker at the 4th Strathmore Alumni Annual Connect Gala, she chose not to offer a polished formula for success.
Instead, she spoke about the uncomfortable parts.
“As a leader, you are going to break and build,” she told the gathering.
Held at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Nairobi Upper Hill, the annual gathering brought together members of Strathmore’s alumni community for The Kinship Fe(a)st, under the theme “Innovating Connections, Impacting Tomorrow.”
But Waititu’s address turned the lens inward.
She challenged alumni to think about careers not merely as a succession of job titles, but as a collection of experiences, each one shaping the professional and, more importantly, the person they are becoming.
That means learning to recognise transitions.
“You must keep focus in an uncomfortable transition,” she said.
Sometimes that transition demands staying and building. Sometimes it demands stepping into an unfamiliar environment and challenging oneself to become bigger and better. And sometimes growth requires recognising that a chapter has run its course.
“You also need to know when it is time to pivot and leave,” she said. “Always leave at your best.”
But successful transitions, Waititu cautioned, cannot be improvised.
Before making major career moves, she encouraged alumni to build financial security, invest deliberately in relationships and networks, interrogate their life vision and ask themselves what experiences they hope to gain.
And as careers accelerate, mentorship becomes even more important.
“When you become senior at a young age, always have a mentor,” she advised, while encouraging leaders to collaborate with their peers and those coming behind them to create collective impact.
Humility is another word she returned to.
“The voice of real money is quiet, humble and thoughtful,” she said.
In a professional world where success can sometimes become performative, Waititu argued that humility remains one of the virtues that carries a person furthest. Reputation, too, must be guarded deliberately.
Her message found an unmistakable echo in remarks by Vice Chancellor, Dr. Vincent Ogutu. His challenge to alumni was succinct.
“Be dangerously competent.”
Be exceptional at what you do, he urged, but let that competence sit alongside an integrity that cannot be corrupted.
“Have the courage to stand by your values even when doing so costs you something. And amid the pursuit of professional excellence, remain a person with heart,” advised Dr. Ogutu
For Waititu, that integrity cannot be separated from the larger question of what one’s career is ultimately for.
“The job is going to be how you showed up today and how you impacted the people you meet,” she said.
It was particularly fitting for an evening built around kinship.
Welcoming the Alumni for the Gala, Mr. Kinyua Muriithi, Chair, Strathmore Alumni Board had reminded the gathering that more than 41,000 alumni now share one identity. Strathmore.
“We are bound by one thing. We belong to Strathmore,” he said.
But belonging, he argued, becomes valuable when people connect around that shared identity. Through four propositions, Belong, Connect, Grow and Impact, the alumni community hopes to strengthen relationships, build industry linkages and multiply the work its members are already doing around the world.
His question to the room was therefore deliberately forward-looking.
“What does our kinship make possible after we leave the room?”
It was a question that connected neatly with Waititu’s reflections on leadership.
Careers may be individual journeys, but few meaningful careers are built alone. Mentors matter. Peers matter. Relationships matter. Communities matter.
And as people progress, Waititu reminded them that what they build today stretches beyond themselves.
“Whenever we are building today, we are building for our children.”
Perhaps that is why the most enduring message from The Kinship Fe(a)st was not about how far Strathmore’s alumni have already travelled. It was about who they become along the way.
To be competent, certainly, but dangerously so. To pursue excellence without surrendering integrity. To know when to stay and when to pivot. To cultivate relationships before they are needed. To remain humble when success arrives. And to measure a career not merely by how high one climbs, but by the people and places made better because one was there.
Article written by Stephen Wakhu
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