We call them mentors now. Coaches. Angel investors. But scripture named them first: destiny helpers – people sent by God to shift the course of a life, a family, a sector. They leave everything better than they found it. Job Kariru Muriuki was one.
Kenya’s financial sector has been mourning him. As founder and CEO of Momentum Credit, he built a non-bank lender whose flexible financing kept small businesses breathing.
Since inception, Momentum Credit has disbursed Sh40 billion to more than 300,000MSMEs; 52 percent of clients are women who record an average 28 percent income rise within 12 months. That is SDG 1 and SDG 5 showing up at dinner tables.
The firm’s loan book grew 34 percent year-on-year in 2024, with non-performing loans held below 6.0 percent – proof that trust and rigour can coexist.
Two weeks ago, his first boss eulogised him thus: I had the privilege of working with him from 2008 when he returned from Cambridge with a first-class engineering degree, after a UK management consultancy stint, to join Centum Investments.
I saw him grow into an exceptional leader: highly intelligent, deeply committed, a man of great integrity. Beyond the boardroom, he was a devoted family man.
I didn’t meet Job as a headline. I met him through his mother, Pauline Muthoni Muriuki – a woman of firsts. To know Pauline is to have known Job. She is an outlier, a pioneer whose work crossed borders without ever needing the border of a camera frame.
The titles tell part of it: Marketing Director at Unilever East Africa. CEO of Smart Applications International. Non-Executive Director at E-Soft and Linepal Holdings. In strategy rooms, they speak her name with Harrison Muiru – that rare leader who holds the whole map while others trace one road.
At Smart Applications, she stepped in as CEO to lead its founding years. Under her, Smart became the first company in Kenya to put a fingerprint on healthcare: biometrically controlled smart cards for medical schemes.
The system cut fraud by over 40 percent within two years and reduced claim processing time from 14 days to 48 hours. No more lost papers. No more fraud draining a family’s lifeline. Just a thumbprint, and a mother could treat her child. Pauline didn’t chase innovation for the word. She used it to remove the small indignities that keep people poor.
Yet when I searched for her online, there was almost nothing. Her life was never staged for applause. It was stitched into other people’s breakthroughs. She is a north star – fixed, quiet, unadvertised – the one you navigate by when the night gets too wide. To the world, she is the architect of firsts.
To me, she is simply Pauline. Sometimes ‘mum.’ Always my mentor. To be mentored by Pauline is to understand Job’s clarity. She taught what she lived: faith isn’t Sunday only. It’s the cornerstone you build Monday to Monday on.
My career began in 1995 as a management trainee at East Africa Industries, later Unilever East Africa. Pauline was among the directors who saw something in me I couldn’t see yet. She and leaders like Patricia Ithau, Timothy Kaloki, Martin Mburu, Betty Keittany, Margaret Mwaura, Peter Karatu and Judy Geda understood the sacredness of mentorship.
Pauline called greatness out with tough love, intentional conversations, and by living the example. Bounce back. Learn. Climb the next mountain.
On April 2, 2026, aged 41, Job rested after three years fighting Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis – a rare autoimmune liver disease affecting one in 10,000. It damages bile ducts silently for 10 to 15 years before diagnosis. Median survival from diagnosis: 12-18 years. There is no cure. Yet Job fought. And lived fully.
From London he went to Rela Hospital, Chennai. He received his new liver on October 29, 2024. Despite heavy immunosuppressants, his body began rejecting it in October 2025.
He flew back to Rela on February 7, 2026. Becks, the wife of his youth, prepared to donate part of hers. His best friend David had already given part of his – nearly costing his own life. ‘Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’
Yet his organs failed. The battle ended April 2. Before he passed, Job said he intended to enter full-time ministry. At his memorial on April 14, testimonies agreed: his ministry started young – childhood friends, family he raised, staff he mentored, lives changed by one encounter. The work remains with us. Changed lives are the only audit that matters.