John Gachora


John Gachora is an electrical engineer and bank executive in Kenya, the largest economy in the East African Community. He is the Group Managing Director and Group Chief Executive Officer of NIC Bank Group, a banking conglomerate, with subsidiaries in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Background and education

Gachora was born in Gatamaiyu Village in Kenya's Central Province to subsistence farmers in 1968, the eighth born in a family of thirteen children. He attended Alliance High School. While there, he traveled to the United States as a high school exchange visitor to Brooks School in Andover, Massachusetts. While there, he applied to and was accepted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned both the Bachelor of Science and the Master of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering. Later, in 2002, he received the Executive Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School of Business.

Career

After his master's degree at MIT, he found employment on Wall Street with Credit Suisse. Later, he worked at Bank of America's corporate headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, rising to the rank of Managing Director - Group Head, Investment Banking. In January 2009, he joined Absa Capital in Johannesburg, South Africa, rising to the rank of Chief Executive Officer of Absa Africa at Absa Group Limited, in November 2010. In November 2013, he was appointed Group Managing Director and Group CEO of NIC Bank Group. a position he still occupied as of December 2014.

Other considerations

Gachora is a married father of three children.