Gathu Kiru­bi, brings strong ana­lyt­i­cal skills and demon­strat­ed man­age­ment expe­ri­ence cut­ting across renew­able ener­gy, rur­al devel­op­ment and micro-finance. Aside from hold­ing a PhD in Ener­gy & Rur­al Devel­op­ment from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Berke­ley, a pre­mier insti­tu­tion in the field, Kiru­bi brings to Solar Tran­si­tions over 10 years  expe­ri­ence in inno­va­tion and lead­er­ship in design­ing and man­ag­ing rur­al ener­gy projects in East Africa. In 2001, Kiru­bi won the pres­ti­gious Ash­den Award in recog­ni­tion of “lead­er­ship and inno­va­tion in pio­neer­ing the start-up of a revolv­ing fund cred­it scheme that sup­ports schools and micro-enter­pris­es with ener­gy effi­cient wood stoves in Kenya.

In addi­tion to con­sult­ing on ener­gy and micro­fi­nance with a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing UNDP, Arc Finance, E+Co, and Faulu-Kenya, Kiru­bi is also a Lec­tur­er at the Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ences Depart­ment, Keny­at­ta Uni­ver­si­ty, Nairobi,where he teach­es cours­es on ener­gy, tech­nol­o­gy, and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. His main inter­ests in the project are the link­ages between rur­al access to elec­tric­i­ty and income gen­er­at­ing activ­i­ties, includ­ing small and medi­um size enterprises.