Wambui Gichohi, group head of HR at Liberty Group, frames imposter syndrome as a learned response shaped by social conditioning rather than individual inadequacy. She links it to workplace systems and leadership cultures that influence how confidence and competence are perceived and expressed.
Wambui Gichohi has made peace with one recurring feature of her career: the universe, as she puts it, keeps placing her in rooms where she is the youngest, the only woman, or both. It has happened often enough that she no longer treats it as coincidence. She is group head of human resources at Liberty Group, a franchise operator running eight brands across Kenya and East Africa, including Pizza Hut, Burger King, Subz, Mango, Runway and Puma. She has three cats named Mama, Ginger and Little one, all carrying Kikuyu names because, she says with finality, their mother is a native Kikuyu and it would make no sense otherwise. She prefers Wambui to Elizabeth for the same reason.
Finding voice
Wambui is passionate about women’s rights and the safety of women and children, a conviction she carries into both professional and social spaces. She describes herself as self-aware, strong-willed, and genuinely excited about growing older and the opportunities that come with it.
As a child, she wanted to be a doctor, but that ambition ended during a hospital visit. The smells, the sight of blood, and the overall sensory reality of clinical medicine quickly made her realise it was not the right fit. What followed was a choice between two paths: advocacy or human resources.
“I'm very argumentative, because I read so widely, I’m naturally inquisitive. I enjoy diving into the nuances of a topic and engaging in spirited discourse whenever a subject I’m well-versed in comes up," she observes.
Personality tests, temperament assessments and time ultimately settled the question. She chose HR and became part of the pioneer class for the Bcom human resource management programme at Multimedia University, a cohort of just four or five students in an intimate setting that, she says, only added to the excitement of the qualification.
“I completed my higher diploma in HR, CS is the former CPS which makes me a governance prof alongside HR. A master's degree has been long in progress,” she adds.
Her first role after graduating was at West HRC, an HR consultancy, where she started as an assistant before gradually taking on talent acquisition responsibilities. There, she served a portfolio of five or six companies, handling end-to-end HR processes for each. It was demanding work, but one she describes as a steep and valuable learning curve. Her first boss was a woman, and the mentorship she received there helped shape what came next.
Her second role took her into FMCG manufacturing, where she was temporarily assigned to work with a single client with a permanent workforce of more than 800 people, rising to 1,500 during peak production seasons.
“There was a baptism by fire. I was the youngest in the room, one of the few women, and a first-time manager of an HR team of seven with no prior management experience. I reported directly to the CEO, and within months I was drafting board papers and negotiating HR budgets. But I actually owe a lot of my skill set to the FMCG manufacturing setup, I was early on in my career,” she says.
It was also her first encounter with a unionised workforce, another steep learning curve she describes as going well, without exaggeration.
Leading from the front
From there Wambui moved into banking, landing her first formal head of HR role at a micro-finance bank regulated by the Central Bank of Kenya. She was also board secretary, which meant sitting in front of the board, defending HR papers, fielding questions from directors who had decades on her, learning when to hold ground and when to regroup and come back better prepared for the next quarterly sitting.
“At the Microfinance Bank, I noticed something I have come to see as a consistent thread, I was among the youngest, one of only a handful of women on the executive committee and I did not accept it as fixed. When an exco member left, I made a deliberate case for replacing them with a competent female candidate. When I joined the exco had two women. When I left, it had four or five,” she observes.
The career highlight Wambui names is specific and personal. She was twenty-six years old when she was put forward for the head of HR role at the micro-finance bank.
“The Central Bank's vetting process for senior appointments meant I had to defend myself, my qualifications, experience and readiness for the role before a panel. I defended my appointment, even as it was questioned because of my age and my so-called ‘limited competencies.’ Receiving that final letter confirming my appointment and wishing me well was a defining moment in my career,” she recalls. “Then I was like, imposter syndrome, you are lying to me. I am competent and I deserve to sit in that room.”
Wambui frames imposter syndrome as a predictable outcome of how women are shaped culturally, socially, and religiously, and of the long process required to unlearn those influences.
Her observation is that the men she works with rarely experience imposter syndrome to the degree women do, because they have been prepared differently.
“Boys are raised to see themselves as leaders and providers, while girls are often prepared for marriage and nurturing, with leadership rarely part of the picture. Many grow up not believing they can be leaders, and are sometimes discouraged from being too ambitious or pursuing advanced education. Addressing imposter syndrome at its root often requires deeper work, including therapy, to unpack why many women do not feel worthy,” she explains.
Her prescription begins with therapy and builds into a form of self-awareness she describes as unshakable. She notes that when one understands where the inner voice comes from, what shaped it, what it is protecting, and whose interests it serves, one can begin to answer it.
“You begin to see society for what it is, and you start to question its systems. When that inner voice tells you to keep quiet, not to be too loud or too aggressive, you begin to push back. Men are seen as assertive, while women are labelled aggressive. You start to ask, why should I not be emotional if I have emotions? You come to a place of peace with the reality that in a patriarchal society, a man will often be perceived as more competent. From there, you begin to shatter those narratives for yourself,” she adds.
Challenging imposter syndrome
Wambui goes beyond the personal, turning that self-awareness into policy. No mother on her team loses benefits or leave entitlements following maternity. Flexible working arrangements allow women returning from leave to manage breastfeeding schedules. She advocates openly because she has done the internal work that makes advocacy possible, questioning the systems rather than accepting them.
The lowest moment of Wambui's career came not long after its highest. She was at the board meeting, making a case for a policy covering women who had experienced miscarriage or stillbirth, a gap the Employment Act did not address. She walked in expecting a straightforward conversation.
However, she was in a room of ten elderly men who did not see the issue. The argument put to her was that maternity leave exists for breastfeeding. One asked whether they could be certain a miscarriage had not been a procured abortion.
“They said if there’s no breastfeeding taking place, then no entitlement. I genuinely still feel very angry about it,” she says.
She says she left the meeting briefly to regroup, but returned determined, lobbying and pushing for two months and ultimately secured it, along with therapy included in the medical package for women in that situation.
“It was not enough, but it was better than a week. It still angers me when I think about it. It is the same anger, redirected and sharpened, that makes me a more deliberate advocate every time I am in a position to shape policy. Standing in your truth does not mean leaving your emotions at the door. It means knowing what they are telling you and refusing to shrink,” Wambui says.
Wambui’s career is defined by this refusal to shrink, transforming a room of institutional pushback into a launchpad for systemic reform. By securing medical and mental health protections that the law had ignored, she proved that her rigorous, inquisitive nature is a high-level strategic asset, a blend of governance expertise and the raw courage required to interrogate outdated systems.
“I don’t manage human resources only, I architect cultures where empathy is a measure of institutional strength and where being the only one in the room becomes a powerful vantage point for change. I know exactly how to sharpen conviction into policy, making me a vital voice for any board or group-level leadership team seeking to bridge the gap between traditional governance and the future of work,” she adds.
Away from work Wambui reads widely, fiction, non-fiction, autobiographies, leadership writing and books on female empowerment. She makes time for road trips, good food and vantage points that catch sunsets well.
“I call those small pockets of joy, so, I create little pockets of joy, they help me get through the day-to-day life,” she says.
