Affiliated with
1 link
Graph · Person
Irene Mwendwa
01 · In focus
One person, in the field.
The structured facts the source records about Irene Mwendwa, the count of declared adjacencies in the corpus, and the federation map zoomed on this node and its neighbours.
person
↑2 declared connections
02 · Connections
2 adjacencies, by relation.
Split by direction. Direct links are the ones Irene Mwendwa’s source record names; inferred backlinks are records elsewhere in the corpus that point at this entity.
Direct from this record
1 link
Links named in this entity's structured fields.
Inferred backlinks
1 link
Other records that name this entity.
Key person at
1 link
03 · Background
From the source record.
Body prose as it appears in movement-graph’s published markdown for this entity. Links to other corpus entities resolve to their graph page; links to deeper repo paths are kept as text so the page does not invent a route.
Kenyan tech lawyer and Executive Director of Pollicy since 1 August 2023, succeeding the organisation's founder Neema Iyer. The principal Kenyan / Nairobi-anchored counterpart, at the leadership of the corpus's first sub-Saharan African feminist-tech organisation, to Iyer's pan-African and Sydney-and-Kampala-anchored founding voice.
From Machakos — a small Eastern Kenyan town about 63km southeast of Nairobi — Mwendwa trained as a lawyer at Kenyatta University and now advises governments, civil-society actors and multilateral organisations on digital inclusion, elections and technology policy. She joined Pollicy as Program Manager for Feminist Movement Building and Advocacy before being promoted to Executive Director; Iyer's retrospective on her own succession attributes the handover to Mwendwa's "strong feminist background", her partnership-building and funding-landscape expertise, and her understanding of the Kenyan "frontier market in the digital and data space".
Mwendwa's substantive line of work routes Pollicy's Afro-feminist civic-tech methodology into platform-governance, electoral-integrity, and gendered-disinformation registers. She self-identifies as a tech lawyer rather than activist — "I work on tech and society. I'm working to ensure that people are still able to enjoy the use of technologies without being harmed" — and frames internet design itself as a women's rights issue, particularly for African women political leaders facing coordinated harassment and algorithmic bias. Through Pollicy she leads programme work including the Afrofeminist Internet Scorecard, the Digital Safe Tea card game, the Voice Data Literacy Training Program, and the Fair Digital Kazi Manifesto, and has publicly anchored the Pollicy research finding that 18% of female candidates in Kenya's elections encountered online violence inside the wider African civil-society response to gendered disinformation in African elections. She is deeply committed to advocating for a feminist internet — the public-facing throughline of her work at the post-Iyer leadership phase of Pollicy.
04 · Sources
Where this came from.
6 sources listed from the pinned corpus. Links are shown only when the source URL is a valid HTTP(S) address.
- 6 source links shown
- 2 body links rewritten to graph pages
- 0 omitted links on this page
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neemaiyer.com
Checked 2026-05-15Neema Iyer's own retrospective on stepping down from Pollicy's Executive Directorship — primary source for "Irene Mwendwa will be taking on the role of Executive Director from August 1st 2023", Mwendwa's "strong feminist background", her "partnership building" and "deep understanding of the funding landscape", and her "understanding of the local context" of Kenya as "a frontier market in the digital and data space"
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ned.org
Checked 2026-05-15National Endowment for Democracy Forum Q&A with Irene Mwendwa — primary source for Mwendwa's prior role at Pollicy as Program Manager for Feminist Movement Building and Advocacy before being promoted to Executive Director, and for her self-positioning as "deeply committed to advocating for a feminist internet"
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bmz-digital.global
Checked 2026-05-15BMZ Digital.Global interview with Irene Mwendwa on disinformation and data literacy — primary source for her current title as Executive Director of Pollicy, for her self-description as a lawyer who "advises governments, civil-society actors and multilateral organisations on digital inclusion, elections and technology policy", and for her programme portfolio at Pollicy including the Digital Safe Tea card game, the Afrofeminist Internet Scorecard, the Voice Data Literacy Training Program, and the Fair Digital Kazi Manifesto
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techcabal.com
Checked 2026-05-15TechCabal "My Life in Tech" profile of Irene Mwendwa (8 April 2026) — primary source for Mwendwa's origin in Machakos, "a village in Eastern Kenya, approximately 63km southeast of Nairobi", her law studies at Kenyatta University, her self-identification as a "tech lawyer" working at the intersection of tech and society, and her current research and advocacy focus on platform governance in the Global South, technology-facilitated gender-based violence affecting African women political leaders, and the framing of internet design as a women's rights issue
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apc.org
Checked 2026-05-15Association for Progressive Communications blog on gendered disinformation in African elections — independent secondary source for Mwendwa's role as Executive Director of Pollicy, her public-speaking on gendered disinformation, and the Pollicy-anchored research finding that "18% of female candidates encountered various types of online violence" in Kenya's election context
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openheroines.org
Checked 2026-05-15Open Heroines team page — independent secondary source for Mwendwa as Executive Director of Pollicy and for her self-description as "a legal professional with extensive experience in innovative collaborations and executing projects that deliver better policies and legal frameworks on public policy issues such as elections and technology"
Source: entities/persons/person-irene-mwendwa.md in movement-graph at pin 3cc1a36.