PAW Yvette Ondachi abandoned her bourgeoning marketing career several years ago to seek and tend her green pastures. Her first foray into agriculture was in greenhouse tomato farming in eastern Kenya, where she made huge investments in the hope of reaping great profits; but events didn’t exactly turn out like she expected.

With her experience and clarity of purpose, the young entrepreneur started a new venture she named Ojay Greene which produces and sources fresh fruits and vegetables from smallholder farmers to sell to supermarkets, restaurants and hotels in urban areas. Yvette founded Ojay Greene in March 2014 after quitting her marketing job, ending a 15-year career with pharma giants AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline.

Ojay Greene is an innovative agribusiness with a social mission: to increase the incomes of smallholder farmers. The enterprise does this by working with smallholder farmers to help them tap into the growing demand for fresh fruits and vegetables in urban markets. By interacting with farmers, Ojay Greene strives to change their behaviours from subsistence farming to commercial farming using an approach that involves tackling their immediate and potential risks; the main one being climate change.

She exudes the following traits of a Phenomenal African Woman – Purpose, Tenacity, and Fearlessness which evidently qualifies her as our PAW Personality of the Week