I quit a great job to venture into sustainable constructions

When her dream to represent Kenya as a swimmer at the Olympics were nipped in the bud, Nasra Nanda didn’t dwell on the disappointment.

Instead, she picked herself up and carved a career blending law, politics, construction and sustainability.

Currently, she is serving as a special-elect member of the county assembly, as well as the CEO of the Kenya Green Building Society.

“By training, I am a lawyer. However, I have always found myself drawn to sustainability issues. This passion was initially driven by purpose, because I felt that the profession was bigger than myself in terms of bringing positive change.”

My workaround sustainability, and I guess doing a lot of pro bono work that involves helping people, is what caught the attention of a certain political party, which then gave me my second role as a special elect member of the Nairobi County Assembly.

I grew up in a middle-income family, where my parents always told me that hard work was what would get me ahead in my education, especially as a girl.

My late father was really keen on ensuring that my sisters and I were ready for the world, and he felt that with education, we could compete in anything.

And so my first entrance into the world of competition was through swimming. I got a scholarship to study at Coast Academy, and I even participated in the Commonwealth Games in 2006, and at the World Championships in 2005.

In 2004, I almost represented Kenya at the Olympics but due to corruption, I lost my spot. I had won a scholarship but my opportunity was taken away.

Aged only 13, this was my first cruel encounter with injustice, and I developed bitterness and anger, which progressed to a resentment of the perception that hard work pays which my parents had instilled in me since childhood.

But this made me want to learn how to protect myself and also fight injustice. And when the time came, I enrolled at the University of Nairobi to study law. At that time, public institutions of higher learning witnessed frequent demonstrations, and come to think of it, this cultivated some sense of empathy in me.

This was a crucial platform for me to transition to environmental, social and governance matters, considering that issues pertaining to these issues require us to understand that anything we do will affect people and the environment.

Before that, I was already pushing for sustainability and climate action for about four or five years, but being in the legal space, I felt there was a disconnect between lawyers or service providers.

A lot of us lawyers think that we're here to serve our clients and earn revenue, not save the world. Yet you can bring change and still earn from it. I didn't think you had to do one and sacrifice the other.

Then came the pandemic, which to some extent helped me because health and safety became such a big issue.

However, I felt things weren’t moving fast enough, so after my promotion to Senior Associate at the law firm I was working for within about three or four months, I resigned and joined the Kenya Green Building Society (KGBS), which champions environmental sustainability. Initially, I worked pro bono for about a month and a half, before they appointed me the CEO.

My work involves working with engineers and architects, who are almost always men, so I sometimes find myself being underrated, especially in terms of making decisions.

It is an interesting challenge that I had to face, but the thing with me is I love a challenge. But I also must admit that I had a lot of support. For example, one of the things that we were successful in doing was that for the first time, a built environment player made it to COP.

It happened last year when I took over as CEO. And then this year, a first-time built environment player was a partner at an African climate summit, again with a female CEO.

So I realised sometimes it's not personal. Some people have biases and if we get stuck on their biases, we get off track, and so the best way to prove them wrong is to deliver. Once I started doing that, the very same people who had reservations about me began offering support.

My family stood by me through everything, but they also they insisted that I don’t deplete myself in the process. But I don't think it's practical to have a perfect balance. There are moments in your career where your involvement is needed more. I’ve come to accept that.

I have a diverse support system. There are those who are not ambitious, and are very okay with the nine-to-five job, then there are those who are career driven.

I believe having that variety in my ecosystem of friends is very useful, because there's that realisation that everyone has their own unique journey, and there's no imposed or assumed pressure to achieve the same goals at the same time. 

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