Growing up in family with 12 older siblings and 4 younger ones meant Mary Elizabeth Okelo learned early in life how to stand up and be heard. Her parents set a bar for excellence, faith and education that was embraced in the entire family. Academic success in her high school years enabled her to join Makerere University to study History where she graduated with honours.
Mary was now off to conquer the world and early in her work life she joined Barclays Bank of Kenya. In 1967 she was selected to join the management training program – the first African female to do so in the Bank’s fifty-year history. In 1977 she was appointed to the Westlands Branch as Branch Manager – the first African female to hold such a position. The branch was not doing well and all eyes were on her to see whether a woman could turn it around, and she did! In those days Branch Managers were incredibly distinguished positions, people would wear suits before going to see a branch manager and Mary recalls how people would be surprised when they called on the Branch Manager and found a woman in the seat. Some would dismiss her, choosing to wait for the real manager to turn up. Navigating the challenges of the banking world at that time meant everything from having no women’s toilet in the branch to older male banking customers treating her like a child. Ever the diplomat – she took it all in her stride and focused on introducing changes to her world.
From her position of leadership Mary worked to enable other women in the Bank to join the management track. She kicked off the Barclays Women’s Association, an association that offered a space in which young women could learn from each other. At a time when the majority of staff in the bank were men it was a way for her to open the eyes of the few women in the bank to new possibilities even though she was accused by the management of starting a vagabond union.
Mary was deeply bothered by the restrictions on women’s access to credit that prevailed at the time: banking laws of the day demanded that loans had to be co-signed by a man, whether one was married or not! She went on to challenge these laws internally and externally through her work with Women’s World Banking and in 1982 she became a founder member and first Chair of Kenya Women’s Finance Trust, the precursor to Kenya Women’s Microfinance Bank. From there Mary went on to Abidjan to replicate this idea of women’s banking continentally through the African Development Bank. In 1992 Mary returned home from her career in international banking services. Retirement from banking only meant concentration on a new chapter- she now focused on the school she set up with her husband in 1978, Makini, in an effort to replicate the educational excellence that propelled her life.
Recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the African Bankers Awards we say hongera to the girl from – Mary Okelo (who is incidentally Effie Owuor’s contemporary, both being among the first 13 girls admitted to Alliance Girls for A-Levels) for opening the door for women bankers, and women who bank.