About

The person behind the products.

I'm Brian Chirchir, a product manager, builder, and ILO-certified trainer based in Nairobi. I've spent 8+ years shaping products at Safaricom/M-PESA, IntelliSOFT, GeoPoll, and 4RDigital, and I now run my own company, Civanta.io, where I'm building tools for financial inclusion and entrepreneurship training.

I hold an MSc from University West in Sweden, where I studied on a Swedish Institute scholarship and wrote my thesis on AI in project management through Activity Theory. That blend of the technical and the human is the thread through everything I do.

Outside of product work, I'm a purpose-driven person who believes technology should reduce inequality, not widen it. I'm drawn to problems where the gap between what exists and what people need is wide enough to matter and narrow enough to close with good craft.

Brian Chirchir — Nairobi-based product builder, trainer, and founder.

How I approach the work.

Start with the constraint, not the feature

The most honest product thinking begins with what you can't do. Bandwidth limits, regulatory frameworks, cultural context, and budget reality are not obstacles, they are the design brief. Products shaped by real constraints tend to be more resilient, more focused, and more useful than products shaped by wish lists.

Ship trust before you ship features

In fintech, civic tech, and enterprise, trust is not a nice-to-have. It is the product. A payment reconciliation system that users doubt costs more than one that crashes. An election platform that members question delegitimizes the board it elects. I design for trust first, then layer features on top.

Methodology is a tool, not a religion

I'm PMP-certified, ILO SIYB-trained, and grounded in PMI Disciplined Agile, HCD, and WCAG. I've also learned that no framework survives first contact with a real user unchanged. The value of methodology is structure when you need it and permission to adapt when you don't.

Build with, not for

The SIYB trainers who told me where trainees actually drop off, the field engineers who showed me they work on feature phones, and the SANK members who said 'we don't trust self-registration' shaped better products than any roadmap I could have written alone.

These principles show up most clearly in the product stories, especially PAYGO solar reconciliation, SIYB mentorship, and secure alumni voting.

What I bring to the table.

I hold the product thread from first conversation to shipped release.

I am most useful when the work is still messy: a problem needs framing, users need listening to, and the team needs a path from uncertainty to delivery.

I design for places where infrastructure is part of the product.

M-PESA, USSD, offline-first flows, low-bandwidth constraints, and field teams on feature phones are not edge cases to me. They are the brief.

I turn methods and field knowledge into usable systems.

I like the awkward middle ground between a proven methodology and a working product: preserving what makes the method credible while changing what makes it hard to use.

Certifications

PMP · ILO SIYB Certified Trainer · McKinsey Forward

Education

MSc IT & Management, University West, Sweden (SISGP Scholar)

Recognition

PMI Kenya Young Professional Award, 2022

Languages

English (fluent) · Swedish (conversational)