Partnerships Development Team at Google
Nyasha Duri
Nyasha Duri has recently been headhunted for Google to focus on the UK and Africa, from civic technology social enterprise mySociety in the transparency team: running the world’s largest open-source freedom of information database used by millions worldwide – including in a number of African countries. She also serves as Chair of the Board at do-tank the Policy Centre for African Peoples. Additionally, she developed curriculums and delivered classes for a programming bootcamp with Coding Black Females and Niyo Enterprise. Among other roles, she worked for the British government, the EU, led a project for Switzerland based diplomacy & peacebuilding nonprofit the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, and assisted an Australian CS education company with 500,000+ students. At the California Clean Energy (VC) Fund, using her experience working in startups, she contributed to gender equity across Asia, LG’s Battery Challenge, and Global Climate Action Summit.
A keen social entrepreneur, her first venture won investment from Nominet Trust and the Royals via the Inspiring Digital Enterprise Award (iDEA) in 2015, and invitations to Founders Forum for Good and the Founders of the Future Fellowship. After representing the UK at the 2019 G(irls)20 Summit in Japan and joining the Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society delegation, she founded a social enterprise: yourcareer.site with a mission is to provide professional development support with foresight. Later, she won a Foundervine competition and was asked to be a UN G7 Rapporteur.
Coupled with completing Bain, Apple, and Samsung training & mentoring programmes, Nyasha took part in Chatham House advisory working groups and supported the core team behind crowdsourced COVID-19 resource coronavirustechhandbook.com. Nyasha studied MA Quantitative Politics, Social & Public Policy, Economics and Environmental Science alongside Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese with Software Engineering, then a Health Sciences MSc International Humanitarian Affairs with Human Rights Law plus sustainable development. Most recently, she has received a scholarship to study a medicine course at the University of Cambridge. In addition to her native Shona, she has learnt Zulu, French, German, Spanish, and Swedish too. Thanks to a love for the arts as well, she collaborated with the National Gallery, House of Illustration, Lyrix Organix, Battersea Arts, ERIC Festival, Academy of Music & Sound, tvebiomovies for the Environment, YOUYOU Mentoring, Library and Keats House.
Her multifaceted advocacy, activism, and ambassadorship encompass UNICEF Uganda, Theirworld (and its Global Business Coalition for Education), Youth Employment UK, Stemettes, Beyond Suffrage, and FORWARD – Foundation for (African) Women’s Health Research and Development. She has also conducted research with ClearView Research, Bite the Ballot, and You Press – for the Mayor of London as well as UCL, the universities of Peking (China) Gothenburg (Sweden), and Katowice (Poland). Previous efforts have reached thousands alongside leading to recognition through: multiple UN organs, World Bank, WWF, EU, ITC (WTO/UNCTAD), International Gender Champions, US State Department, Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Government, Unilever, Google, HP Enterprise, Accenture, Salesforce Foundation, Channel 4’s 4Talent, The Economist, Freeformers, YMCA, Women in Science & Engineering, Women Who Code, CodeFirstGirls, and Jo Cox Foundation. Nyasha’s solo and joint endeavors were covered by The Guardian, The Independent, BBC, Daily Mirror, HuffPost, Dazed, London Live, Cyber Salon, Silicon Republic, Computer Business Review, The Irish Times, New Zimbabwe, The Herald, Ham&High, Women Shift Digital, and Brazil’s Globo Media.