Shiphrah | Kenya
A Life Turned Upside Down
Shiphrah was in her second year studying information technology when her mother passed away unexpectedly in December 2022. As a single parent, her mother had sacrificed everything to keep her daughters in school. Now Shiphrah had to care for her 13-year-old sister, and she didn’t have the school fees to complete university.
She dropped out and moved in with her aunt and uncle. She was unemployed and didn’t have credentials. She felt stuck and didn’t know where to turn.
“I felt like I used to have dreams, I had ambitions, but now I felt like all the dreams were gone. Because this is me here, I’m not continuing with school. I don’t have work. I have nothing.”
Turning Pain Into Purpose
Her uncle discovered Generation Kenya’s freelancer program through a church WhatsApp group. Shiphrah decided to give it a go.
The program taught virtual assistant skills, data analysis, and personal branding. The work was self-driven and entrepreneurial. For Shiphrah, it became a way to finally channel her energy toward building the life she wanted, as she slowly processed the enormous loss of her mother.
At Generation, Shiphrah received mentorship, community, and emotional support. “There were a lot of empowerment sessions and mental health sessions, and you could see they cared about people and their mental states.”
Finding Her Own Way
After graduating, Shiphrah became a top earner on the freelancing platform Remotask and was invited to become a peer mentor. This work revealed her passion for helping others on their path, and for paying it forward. Eventually her mentorship work turned into a paid opportunity, and became part of her income stream.
The path she started on with Generation has given her a lot of financial independence. She’s now paying her own university fees and pursuing a degree in Criminology and Cybercrime, set to graduate this year.
Shiphrah also made a profound transformation from feeling powerless to finding her calling and actively driving her career forward. While freelancing, Shiphrah pursued cybersecurity certifications and built her personal brand, something she learned about at Generation. When she met the CEO of Leadshare Labs at a local tech event, they hired her based on her community work and self-taught expertise. Today, Shiphrah works in cybersecurity and AI security at Leadshare Labs while continuing her paid mentoring work, and serving as an ambassador for Women Tech Network.
“Generation helped me to become an asset and to have an impact in my community,” she told us.
