Tania Laden

Executive Director and Co-Founder, LivelyHoods

2018 International Award Winner

Tania Laden is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of LivelyHoods, a not-for-profit social enterprise that distributes life-changing products in Kenyan slums through a nationwide sales network of unemployed youth and women. Under Laden’s leadership, LivelyHoods has distributed over 31,000 clean energy products, such as clean cookstoves and solar lamps, while also training more than 3,500 clean energy entrepreneurs. These products have saved slum households an estimated $16.4 million in reduced fuel costs and saved over half a million trees from being used for fuel. Laden helped found LivelyHoods at the end of 2010, bringing her global business acumen and experience to the organization. Prior to her current position, she worked as a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley and as a business and technology analyst at EZLearn, an educational technology startup in Brazil. After serving as an adviser and volunteer for two years with KITO International, a Nairobi-based youth employment non-profit, she moved to Kenya to build and manage the first sales agent network created by LivelyHoods. Laden is recognized as a 2011 Mara Foundation Entrepreneur Fellow, one of PBS Newshour’s Agents of Change, and a Global Social Benefit Fellowship (GSBI) Fellow. She earned her BS from Stanford University, where she graduated with a degree in Science, Technology and Society with a focus on Management Science and Engineering.