Nairobi, Kenya, and New York, U.S. | On the 15th Anniversary of She’s the First — a leading organization in the movement for girls’ rights — Co-Founder/CEO Tammy Tibbetts is proud to announce a new chapter ahead: Beginning on January 1st, she and Catherine (Kate) Kiama will begin serving as Co-CEOs, reporting into the Board of Directors together.

Kate is currently the Director of Programs & Impact at She’s the First. Kate was the first STF hire in Kenya in 2020, at the peak of COVID-19 crisis management. She built an East African-Latin American team and made She’s the First a visible, reputable NGO in Kenya. She gradually took the reigns of program strategy over from Christen Brandt, Tammy’s co-founder, who had a visionary succession plan to shift executive leadership to the Global South.

Under Kate’s leadership, She’s the First’s impact scaled, reaching 100,000 more vulnerable girls through a model of training community-based organizations, led by women, to be more girl-centered. She has been a critical partner to Tammy, in mobilizing resources and building relationships with progressive institutional funders.  

Kate’s resume before She’s the First showed her devotion to social justice and building girls’ power, too. She graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of London and completed the Advocates Training Program at the Kenya School of Law. She wanted to use her background in law to address social injustices facing women and adolescent girls. She served as a Grant Manager at the Nike Foundation in Portland, Oregon supporting the Girl Effect Movement. Upon returning home to Kenya, she wanted to dive back into mentorship programs for girls, becoming a Program Director at Akili Dada. She later joined She’s the First to follow that passion at a global scale and never looked back. Kate is frequently shortlisted as a top woman leader by Kenya's most respected business and media outlets (Business Daily’s 2024 Top 40 Under 40, African Union’s Women of Impact). 

Kate and Tammy are grateful for the Board of Directors’ support of a co-leadership model. (Christen and Tammy always believed co-leadership was a secret to their success, and they’d point others to the resources at feministcoleadership.com to understand the values behind this approach.)

Tara Abrahams, Board Chair of She’s the First, shares: “On behalf of the Board, we are confident in what Kate and Tammy will achieve together, building on the legacy of co-founder Christen Brandt and on the milestones that Tammy has achieved as CEO over the past two years. She’s the First is stronger than ever, and together, these two will be a force on behalf of all girlkind.”

In 2025, Kate and Tammy will celebrate 15 years of She’s the First and share their vision for what’s next with our community at in-person and virtual events. We hope to see you there!

She’s the First is a global girls’ rights organization that fights for a world where every girl can choose her own future. We team up with grassroots leaders to make sure girls everywhere are educated, respected, and heard. Over the past 15 years, we’ve created transformational outcomes for 563,741 girls by working alongside 685 community organizations in 42 countries. To fulfill our mission, we teach a girl how to speak up for herself in her home, school, and community, while we teach the mentors in her life practical ways to support her agency. As a result, these girls become the first women in their families to achieve amazing milestones—and they are never the last.