| Laila Macharia | |
|---|---|
| Born | Laila Macharia |
| Residence | Nairobi, Kenya |
| Nationality | Kenyan |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur |
| Years active | 2006–Present |
| Known for | Founder of Scion Real |
| Title | Dr |
Laila Macharia is the Founder and CEO of Scion Real in Nairobi, Kenya.
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In 2006, Laila founded Scion Real, a Nairobi based advisory and investment firm focused on urban development in Africa. The firm provides intelligence, strategy and investment solutions for institutional investors, multinationals and governments and has established a series of equity funds for investor participation. Before this, she was a director at Magnolia Development Company where she led strategy and raised equity and bridge financing for an initial USD $2 million project completed in early 2006 and several subsequent projects thereafter.
From 2003-2004, Laila was a Corporate Associate at Kaplan and Stratton in Nairobi, Kenya. Preceding this, she worked at Clifford Chance, New York as a Corporate Associate. There, she coordinated a USD $5 billion multi-currency bond financing program and supported a similar USD $4 billion program including syndicated, credit-linked and equity- linked issuances on the New York, Luxembourg and Tokyo Stock Exchanges. She also ran a real estate investment company focused on multi-unit apartment buildings in Newark and Maplewood, New Jersey.
Laila currently serves on several boards on private companies, including as the chairman of the property subsidiaries of Centum, the largest quoted investment company listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. She also sits on the Capital Markets Tribunal of Kenya.
Laila holds a Doctorate in Law (J.S.D) from Stanford Law School where her dissertation focused on infrastructure sector reform. Her current research priority is the gap between law on the books and law in practice. Her specific interests are disobedience, instrumentalist uses of law and informal (political, economic) pressures on the formal law. While some of her works examine East African law against legal trends elsewhere, others explore how Kenyans perceive, use and negotiate the legal system, legal change and legal pluralism.
Previously, Laila attained a Master of Laws (J.S.M.) - 2000 (A- GPA) from Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, California as well as a Bachelor of Laws (J.D.) and Master of Laws (LL.M) - International and Comparative Law - from the Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Planning and Public Policy from the University of Oregon.
Laila has passed the bar in Maryland (1996), New York (2002) and is an Advocate of High Court of Kenya (2006).
Laila is currently on the faculty at Strathmore Business School in Nairobi where she teaches executive education to private and public sector leaders. Previously, Laila was an instructor at United States International University - Kenya Campus where she taught Business Law (Fall 2005) to undergraduate students and a graduate seminar on the Legal Environment of Business (Spring 2006) to graduate students.
Laila is a regular contributor to Business Daily and the East African.
Laila has initiated several projects to reform the building industry and improve urban governance in East Africa. Currently, she is working with Kenya’s Ministry of Housing and Uganda’s National Housing Corporation as well as the Kenyan Capital Markets Authority to stimulate housing supply particularly by increasing finance for home buyers and builders.
Laila founded the Lollipop Project in 2005, a community-based initiative working with schools and corporates in Nairobi and Mombasa to provide crossing guards at school crossings. The organisation works with the police to identify the most dangerous crossing points for children and then links affected schools to corporate funders.
In 2006, Laila was a Founder Member of the Kenya Property Developers Association. She served as Chairman from 2008 and was re-elected in late 2010. The association is an alliance of progressive builders working to make the building industry in Kenya more economical, ethical and environmentally sustainable. The organisation has been very active in promoting green building, progressive land policy and affordable housing.
She was active in the Citizens Pathway Group, a multi-ethnic group of professionals that helped resolve the post-election crisis in Kenya in 2008. She has also worked as a Senior Regional Advisor at USAID East Africa where she led a project to regulate and regionalise the freight industry in Eastern Africa.
Laila served as a panelist in the 2009 NYSE Knowledge@Wharton[1] where she represented her vision for fueling the economy of Kenya by improving the lives of thousands, possibly millions of her nation's poorest people by developing sustainable and affordable housing schemes. In 2010 Laila gave a talk at TEDxNairobi on Sustainable Urban Planning and Real Estate Development.
Laila Macharia has received numerous awards and honours for her work.
Fellow, Africa Leadership Initiative (ALI), 2010 [2]
Scholar, John M. Olin Scholarship in Law and Economics (Stanford University) 2006-7
Fellow, Stanford University Program in International Legal Studies Fellowship, 1999-2000[3]
Recipient, Institute for African Development (Cornell University) Travel Grant, 1994 & 1995
John M. Olin Scholarship in Law and Economics (Cornell University), 1993–95
Fellow, Institute for African Development, 1993–95
Legal Internship, Black Lawyers Association, Johannesburg, South Africa, Summer 1993
Dean’s List (University of Oregon), 1992
Who’s Who among Students in American Colleges and Universities, 1992
Student Ambassador, International Cultural Service Program (University of Oregon), 1989–1992