Brenda Ogutu is the Associate Engagement Director at Busara, a non-profit organization based in Nairobi, Kenya that uses social and behavioral scientific research to solve problems in development and poverty alleviation in the Global South. In her role, Brenda oversees and coordinates a diverse portfolio of governance-related projects. Her work at the firm began in 2018 when she was hired as a Senior Analyst and worked on several large-scale and multidisciplinary research projects in the financial sector and governance and accountability projects across Kenya, Tanzania, and Somaliland. More recently she has also worked on projects in Uganda. Prior to joining Busara, Brenda was a Mastercard Foundation Scholar who honed her research skills at the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a master’s degree in City Planning from the College of Environmental Design.
Since she was young, Brenda was interested in the built environment and often thought about the dynamics between architecture and the space around her. When she moved from the countryside to the urban environment of Nairobi, Kenya, she witnessed the quality of life in informal settlements and was deeply impacted by the experience the more she interacted with this environment.
“It was poorly planned or, if it was planned, it was poorly implemented,” she said. “Since the settlement is informal, they don’t really have a lot of rights, so there’s a lot of littering and poor housing. My response then was, what do I do about it? When it was time to decide what to pursue for my undergraduate degree at the University of Nairobi, I thought about what part of my work would involve people, because my interest shifted to improving the lives of the people. I wanted to do it by interacting with them and understanding what they want for the environment. Urban planning has that element of building the environment through talking to people and seeing what they want around them—what their priorities are, whether housing or transportation, and so on. Engineering does not allow that, it’s more technical. And then I also wanted to do away with littering and change people’s perspectives on how they interact with the natural environment in addition to the built environment. That is how I ended up in urban planning.”
As an undergraduate student, Brenda interned at Unmande Trust, an organization that builds biocenters that recycle waste to produce biogas for things such as cooking. Networking with several of her lecturers and professors led her to discover an internship opportunity and projects that she subsequently became involved in, such as energy audits and development plans. One of these professors that Brenda worked with was very familiar with the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at UC Berkeley and encouraged his students to apply. “Honestly we don’t get to hear about these opportunities a lot, unless it comes from somebody you know,” Brenda added. Brenda also explored several universities in the United Kingdom and was accepted into the University of Reading, but ultimately decided on UC Berkeley due to the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program and UC Berkeley’s reputation as the best public university.
“When I was looking at universities in Kenya, they didn’t break down their program so much. I really appreciated how City Planning at UC Berkeley broke down their program; they had the housing, you could do urban design, you could do the environment, and I was looking for the environment specifically. But mostly, I made my decision because, at the time at least, UC Berkeley was the number one public university.”
Brenda credits the her experience at UC Berkeley for leading to her successful career, especially the wide diversity in thought among students and faculty that shapes UC Berkeley’s campus.
“In Kenya, we would do the readings after the class, and we didn’t have a class for pure discussion. So, I liked that in the planning classes at UC Berkeley we had dedicated class time for discussions, which pushed me to think beyond what I was comfortable with. The professors also pushed us to think creatively, which is required in the professional setting.”
Additionally, Brenda appreciated the case studies focused on the Global South, which helped her to think better about the East African context and gain a broader, comparative view that also includes how planning is done in the Global North. One class in particular stood out for Brenda due to the way in which the curriculum brought in many professionals and provided a significant amount of practical experience. The Department of City and Regional Planning also held many networking events that Brenda found useful, as she notes that “UC Berkeley has a lot of extracurricular events, programs, and workshops that you can do and get involved in.”
One program that Brenda participated in allowed her to gain paid experience working for the city of Richmond by helping to develop its first Annual Rent Program Report for 2017-2018. The Richmond Rent Program was implemented by Richmond voters to address the inflated housing market, so that the rent increases of tenants remain predictable and affordable while ensuring that landlords obtain a fair return. Brenda’s work for the city of Richmond went beyond the data analysis of her thesis and involved attending rent board meetings and speaking with several stakeholders to present a deliverable. She audited housing units and the rental assistance program in order to assess what was helping the people of Richmond and determine issues in need of improvement.
Brenda also gained firsthand experience through a course at UC Berkeley in which she assisted Professor Jason Corburn, who works on informal settlements in Kenya. She even travelled to Kenya with him and saw his work: “I was able to quickly relate what I learned in my coursework to what he was doing on the ground in Kenya.” Brenda believes she was able to secure work at Busara quickly upon leaving UC Berkeley thanks to these practical work experiences that complemented the theoretical foundations of the classroom. She discovered the career opportunity at Busara through the Africa Careers Network.
Brenda’s work at Busara is more research oriented, which suited the shift in her interests. “At UC Berkeley I decided that I wanted to do a bit more research,” she disclosed.
“I enjoyed one of UC Berkeley’s research methodologies classes that basically went through the entire research process, and I thought it was really interesting how it helped me uncover what was not working in the Kenyan system. That’s how I transitioned from making development plans to research, because I felt like I didn’t have all the answers. I made development plans in Kenya and handed it to the policy makers, but sometimes they don’t implement them, so I wanted to figure out how to move that from the table to implementation.”
Still seeking ways to change people’s perspectives on the environment, Brenda was drawn to Busara’s approach utilizing behavioral science.
“We want to understand how citizens make decisions on whether to engage in civic activities, and when they do engage in civic activities, we seek to know what behavioral themes come through. Then, we share that information with civil society organizations and advise them on how to interact with the citizens,” Brenda Image of title slide from a presentation about Busara's work on business cooperatives in Uganda, in partnership with The Uhuru Institute for Social Developmentexplained. She has analyzed communications strategies and the cost-effectiveness of message testing for engaging citizens in civic issues, which formed part of the government portfolio. Her organization tracks communication flows and misinformation so that it can advise on where intervention and messaging are needed to sustain civic engagement through a feedback loop. The main goal of the organization’s governance portfolio is to increase citizens’engagement in the issues affecting them, such as urban development and planning and impacts to the natural environment, and subsequently to track the government’s responsiveness.
For a recent consultation project in Uganda, Busara partnered with The Uhuru Institute for Social Development, which collaborates with various stakeholders to advance and apply the cooperative business model in pursuit of socio-economic transformation and the communal generation of wealth by citizens. Busara’s research emphasized the benefits of standardized and collaborative data management in addition to the importance of social and cultural values, such as inclusivity in decision-making, and long-term business approaches for building resilience. Busara has thus advocated for gender diversity and inclusion of more young people at the decision-making board level of cooperatives, as well as more community engagement overall.
“When I say changing mindsets, it’s just to help them see the benefits of including all these cooperative values and principles in their work,” Brenda noted.
A glance at Brenda’s current LinkedIn profile page will find a cover image displaying the words, “a better world is possible.” As a leading member of Busara, Brenda is achieving her goal of making the world a better place.