
Ory Okolloh is a Kenyan activist, lawyer, and blogger. She currently holds the position of Director of Investments at
Omidyar Network. She was formerly the Policy Manager for Africa with Google. In 2006 she co-founded the parliamentary watchdog site
Mzalendo (Swahili: "Patriot"). The site sought to increase government accountability by systematically recording bills, speeches, MPs, standing orders, etc.
When Kenya was engulfed in violence following a
disputed presidential election in 2007, Okolloh helped create
Ushahidi (Swahili: "Witness"), a website that collected and recorded eyewitness reports of violence using text messages and
Google Maps. The technology has since been adapted for other purposes (including monitoring elections and tracking pharmaceutical availability) and used in a number of other countries. Okolloh also has a personal blog,
Kenyan Pundit, which was featured on
Global Voices Online. She also worked as a legal consultant for
NGOs and has worked at
Covington and Burling, the
Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, and the
World Bank in the past.
Okolloh was born into a relatively poor family. She has said that her parents sent her to a private elementary school that they could "barely afford," which "set the foundation for what ended up being my career." She earned an undergraduate degree in Political Science from the
University of Pittsburgh and graduated from
Harvard Law School in 2005.
Okolloh lives in
Johannesburg,
South Africa, with her husband and three children.



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