Jane Waithitu is the Executive Director and founder of Peace Warriors Organisation (PWO), a grassroots women-led NGO of peace builders and mediators throughout Africa. PWO is a national organization with over 150 members who are community-based actors working towards peace in various capacities at the grassroots level The 150 members are based in all the 47 counties in Kenya and there are 7 community-based organizations under the umbrella of PWO locally.

Jane is currently an international mediation coach and trainer, coaching people from all over the globe at Interaction Management Associates (IMA) based in Arizona USA. Jane is a master’s degree holder in Education and has held several positions in education sector including Education and Schools Leadership Advisor in the Ministry of Education in Rwanda, secondary school principal and a teacher in Kenya. Jane is also a mentor at Mastercard Foundation and a member of Global Give Back Circle that aims to empower young men and women from Africa especially in conflict areas, to break out of the circle of violence, poverty and achieve social and economic independence by providing them with support through a long-distance mentoring program. In the past, she has held a position as a program officer in Transformative Leadership in Kenya where she was very instrumental in the development of the women political parties charter. Jayne was a 2021 finalist in the USIP Women Building Peace Award.

As a peacebuilding practitioner, Jayne has worked locally, nationally, and internationally in an inclusive and participatory manner. On international level, Jane has worked in Rwanda on peace traversing the whole of Rwanda preaching peace through sports. Jane has actively engaged and participated  in UN system-wide community-engagements dialogues online since 2018 and in 2020, she was involved in a discussion on the Community Engagement Guidelines (the Guidelines) that embody the commitment of the UN to engage more closely with peacebuilders, including women, youth, and local communities. The Guidelines will serve as a recognition of the importance of meaningful and inclusive partnerships between the UN and civil society to achieve the best peace outcomes at the regional, national, and local levels. 

Participant in: November/December 2022 Fellowship: Peacebuilding and Women’s Meaningful Participation in Peacebuilding Processes