Sam Owilly is a social and economic inclusion specialist, strategic advisor, and former Chief Executive Officer with more than 18 years of experience designing, managing, and scaling development programmes across Kenya and Sub-Saharan Africa. His expertise spans social protection, poverty graduation, livelihoods, enterprise development, government partnerships, programme management, and monitoring, evaluation and learning.

During his tenure at BOMA, Mr. Owilly led multi-country programmes and supported the integration of community-based economic inclusion interventions into government systems. As Chief Executive Officer, he provided strategic and operational leadership to the organization of more than 400 staff and managed an annual budget exceeding US$23 million. During his tenure, he supported sustained organizational growth, strengthened institutional systems, expanded multi-country programming, and oversaw partnerships with governments, multilateral institutions, and philanthropic organizations. Notably, he led the Kuza Jamii consortium, a co-financed initiative of the Government of Kenya and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which contributed to embedding the poverty graduation approach within Kenya’s national social protection framework.

Mr. Owilly has extensive experience in designing and scaling graduation and enterprise development programmes that support vulnerable households to build sustainable livelihoods. His work has included strengthening participants’ business capabilities, access to capital, savings mechanisms, and market linkages. He has also negotiated partnerships with national and county governments and supported the adoption and institutionalization of development programmes within public systems.

In addition to his executive and programme leadership experience, Mr. Owilly has a strong background in organisational governance, financial oversight, monitoring, evaluation and learning, theory of change development, and institutional capacity strengthening. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees and Finance Committee of Spring Impact and previously served on the Board of InterAction. He also works as an independent strategic advisor, supporting mission-driven organizations to strengthen governance, institutional capacity, programme delivery, and public-sector partnerships.

Mr. Owilly holds a Master of Business Administration from Strathmore Business School, a Master of Climate Change and Adaptation and a Master of Arts in Project Planning and Management from the University of Nairobi. He also holds a Certificate in Monitoring and Evaluation.