Resume

Professional Summary

Somet Kipchilat sits at the forefront of the fastest growing technology industry and market. as a Program manager under the Next Billion Users (NBU) org at Google, building programs to empower software engineers to achieve more.  He also spends part of his time working with several startups and entrepreneurs on their Digital Transformation Journey

Previously he served as a Senior Business Development manager for Sub-Saharan Africa under Microsoft`s Africa Initiative (4Afrika). He plays a key role in representing the company externally within the Startup and developer ecosystem on the continent and advocates on Microsoft’s work on several critical issues around technology including Access, skills, privacy, security, accessibility.

He has also helped to build Microsoft`s ISV Partner and startups engagements and position Microsoft as a market leader in the cloud space across the African continent.

A passionate Solution architect with deep industry knowledge in cloud services , he has worked with over 500 startups and partners across several markets to build solutions on the cloud that have both a local and global impact.

Throughout his 8 years in Microsoft, he has built a reputation for developing programs and engagements to empower developers, evangelizing developer tools across enterprises, startups, and student developer audiences.

He works closely with startups to build business strategies, incubate new business models based on technologies that have built on top of Microsoft cloud services and to scale those across different markets

Somet holds board advisory positions in several organizations across east Africa and the United Kingdom.

He also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Technology from Jomo Kenyatta university and several industry certifications in both technical and business areas.

Somet is a valued conference and professional speaker on not only technology but also digital transformation, data protection, data privacy and cloud governance and building startups. presenting and speaking in several conferences and industry events to both technical and business audiences

PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCIES SUMMARY

  • Served as a Project manager for the Afrika Initiatives.
  • Served as a Cloud solutions architect under the innovation team within the Microsoft Africa Initiatives (Microsoft 4Afrika).
  • Served as a Project manager for Kaizala in Kenya.
  • Served as an auxiliary CTO for several startups.
  • Served as a technical resource for the Microsoft East Africa Subsidiary.
  • Thought Leader on GDPR and its Impact on the Continent.

Community activities.

  • Served as a Mentor and Jury for the Seedstars World Competitions in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Switzerland in 2016, 2017 and 2018
  • Worked at part of the organizing team for the Next tech Africa Conference 2017
  • Served as a Judge for the Microsoft Imagine Cup Innovation Competition 2018.
  • Served as a Judge for the Connected East Africa summit innovation award 2016.
  • Served as a trainer for the Presidential Digital Talent Program in 2017
  • Speaker at the Sahara Sparks Smart Cities event in Dar Es Salaam 2017
  • Speaker/ Trainer for AfriLabs in Nigeria in 2017
  • Speaker for the Nairobi Tech Week 2017 and 2018

WORK EXPERIENCE

Program Manager

Google

August 2022 – Present

  • Building UXR immersion programs for engineering teams that are building for the next billion users.
  • Working on UX infrastructure allows engineers to be more efficient in conducting research in Emerging markets.
  • Developed systems to proactively identify improvements and future optimizations, including change management and performance metrics for the NBU (Next Billion Users) Studios Program that supports UX teams conducting research in Sub Saharan Africa and other emerging markets. This increased team efficiency by 30 %.
  • Independently managed 4 existing and 1 new cross-functional programs through their full lifecycle to meet the UX team-level objectives.

Product Manager

Melanin Kapital

Feb 2022-July 2022

  • Worked on building the technology infrastructure to enable SME`s in the climate space get access to financing through the tech platform.
  • Lead collaboration meetings to develop key processes for creation of new pivot for the product to focus on climate sustainability investors which lead to the close of a 120K$ Investment.
  • Successfully prioritised product requirements and set realistic expectations regarding development and timelines which saved the team 2 week of development work.
  • Worked with the UX team to run usability testing for the solution and pipeline that feedback back to engineering.
  • Lead a team of two engineers and two UX designers.

Senior Program Manager

Microsoft

March 2022 -May 2022

  • Lead the delivery of the Microsoft AgriChat platform to Key Agriculture Stakeholders (Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, fisheries and Cooperatives, World bank, IFC, KALRO, AGRA (Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa) rolled out to 598,000 Farmers.
  • Drove partnership and collaboration with internal products/services and external partners on both the technology, solution, and business front.
  • Drove collaboration across diverse set of stakeholders (engineering, product marketing, customer support) to deliver the value-proposition of the platform to enterprise customers and partners.
  • Built a structural approach in solving complex problems in relation to Customer adoption of the solution.
  • Defined the Go to Market strategy for the solution to scale through partners.

Senior Business Development Manager

Microsoft

September 2020- Oct 2021

  • lead the Microsoft Startup engagement program across Africa. This involved Building the Program Strategy and Execution.
  • Built a strategic vision and roadmap to develop best in class scalable programs that drove the accelerated success of startups.
  • Built and executed programs with VCs, Accelerators, Incubators, and partners to build a scalable Startup engagement Program. This resulted in engagement of 800+ startups across the African continent.
  • Collaborated with the developer Audience Product marketing Managers to build out Developer Engagement Programs that are relevant for startup audiences.
  • Contributed to the design of Microsoft Student Developer Relations Programs (Game of Learners, Imagine Cup, Microsoft Student Ambassadors)
  • Contributed to Building the Engineering Strategy that led to the establishment of the Microsoft Africa Development Centre.

ISV Partner Development Manager

Microsoft

August 2018 – August 2020

  • Responsible for Identifying, qualifying, onboarding, and enable strategic, net-new partners (Independent Software Vendors) to develop solutions on the Microsoft platform,
  • Contributed to building the Partner Engagement Plan adopted by the Subsidiary as an engine used today to recruit net new Microsoft partners.
  • Served as a point of contact for the partners to Microsoft Engineering and support teams.
  • Supported Partners to drive alignment to Microsoft Sales Programs to grow Business for the partner by at least 3x.
  • Delivered the first startup co-sell deal across the Multi Country cluster.

Product Manager

Microsoft

July 2017 – Dec 2017

  • Served as a product manager for Microsoft Kaizala in Africa that led to growth in product adoption in the region by 25%.
  • I was responsible for driving development of Mini Applications on top of the Kaizala Platform and giving direct feedback back to the engineering teams on the product.
  • Ran a pilot program with enterprises in emerging markets including Unilever, M-Kopa solar, Copia, Twiga Foods and 17 other Organizations.
  • Supported the Launch of the Product in Kenya that led to 600K daily active Users in the first year.

Technology Evangelist

Microsoft

Dec 2015 – July 2018

  • Responsible for driving Microsoft’s platform and tools adoption and BizSpark program enrolment among startups.
  • engaged senior business and technical decision-makers at startups to articulate the business and technical value of Microsoft platforms and tools and identify creative business opportunities for those startups. This resulted in a 38% growth in subsidiary’s Azure revenue/Consumption.
  • Served as a trusted advisor between local startups and Microsoft as it relates to emerging developer tools and platform technologies. This led to the highest level of developer engagements across Africa.

Developer Experience and Platform Evangelist

Microsoft

Dec 2014 – June 2015

  • Responsible for driving deeper engagement with developers with an emphasis on targeting/engaging non-MSFT developers across key development ecosystems. ​This led to the highest number of apps on the windows/Windows phone across MEA.
  • Built a startup and developer community of approximately 4800 members around Microsoft Azure Cloud solutions while acting as their technical consultant and voice within Microsoft.
  • Managed a team of 14 Technical Evangelist`s that sat across various countries across Africa who acted as the point of contact for Microsoft within their developer communities.
  • Lead the Microsoft Student partner Program to drive cloud technology adoption across several universities on the continent.

NOTABLE ENGAGEMENTS

EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING

Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology

Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, Information Technology

2011-2014

I pursued a bachelor’s degree in information technology at the school of computer science and information technology. Activities and Societies: Microsoft Technical Communities, JKUAT Linux User Group,

Sacho high school

High School

2007 – 2010

Volunteer Experience & Causes

Community Lead

Jkuat Linux User Group

Science and Technology

I am one of the community leaders at JLUG and also a contributor to .NET developers

Community Manager

Jkuat Microsoft Technical Community

July 2013 – November 2014 (1 year 5 months)

Science and Technology

I was the Community Manager I helped plan activities for the Community and also was the point of contact and developer experience manager and also handled interaction between the community and Microsoft

Microsoft Student Partner Lead- Kenya

2013-2014

Certifications

Exam 70-535: Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions

Microsoft

June 2018 – Present

MTA: Cloud Fundamentals – Certified 2018

Microsoft

June 2018 – Present

Microsoft-INSEAD Value Negotiation

Microsoft – INSEAD

2018 to Present

MTA: Software Development Fundamentals

Microsoft

November 2014 – Present

Microsoft Technology Associate

Microsoft

November 2014 – Present

K4Life

Seven Seas technologies Knowledge transfer center

March 2013 – Present

HONORS & AWARDS

Go Green Hero Award

Microsoft East Africa

May 2015

He has gone out of his way to assist the new interns, guiding them on Microsoft culture He has also been keen to help the business teams and recently helped build the App that was used for registration at Connected East Africa event in Kenya exhibiting a true spirit of going above and beyond his call of duty to make others succeed.

GO Green Award

Microsoft East Africa

March 2015

He has gone over and above his role to support other business segments from a technology perspective. Has worked with teams across the different segments and has shown an ability to learn and adapt at every opportunity presented to him.

LANGUAGE SKILLS

French – Elementary proficiency

English – Full professional proficiency

kiswahili – Full professional proficiency

PROJECTS

Microsoft AI/IOT Pop Up Lab

Microsoft Insider Labs

Businesses from small startups to large companies and entrepreneurs look set to save significant amounts of time and money when Microsoft’s state of the art IoT & AI Insider Lab launches in April.

Following the success of existing labs in the US and China, the new Munich-based lab will be perfectly placed to connect with every major tech hub and capital in EMEA.

Microsoft’s IoT and AI Insider Labs enable users to bring their early-stage projects or solutions to an environment which allows rapid design, prototyping, and testing, with a team of dedicated Microsoft experts on hand every step of the way to provide guidance and assistance.

Somet Kipchilat Resume May 2023Download