Jack Ngare joined Shell Foundation as a new Trustee in June 2023. He is a Technical Director in the Office of the CTO for Google Cloud and focuses on working with global top companies to digitise, modernise and draw analytical AI driven insights into their business through next generation architectures, engineering excellence, security and cost and performance optimisation.
Being from Kenya, he is passionate about how cloud, AI and engineering can impact developing countries and leapfrog them into an era of more opportunities and prosperity. He is on the board of advisors for several ESG responsible startups, banks and payment platforms. He often quips that ‘if it scales and works in emerging markets with all the constraints, it will work anywhere in the world!’
Jack is a seasoned software engineer, tech executive. Prior to Google, Jack worked as the founding managing director for Microsoft’s Africa engineering centre that was the first engineering hub of its scale and kind on the African continent building the next global products for Microsoft. Prior to that, he worked at British Telecom for almost a decade with assignments with large global companies and telcos across the world from Japan, Saudi Arabia, Peru, the US and throughout Europe. Jack was also the Managing Director of one of the largest banks in Africa, Equity Group’s fintech arm that pioneered a modern age in banking on the continent through the digitisation and democratisation of banking through technology at low marginal costs to the high growth but underserved markets.
Jack specialises in connecting science, technology, product and business. He received his distinction in Computer Science from Leicester University and was on the Dean’s List for his Master’s from Harvard University.
Jack is a contrarian (read revisionist) history buff, a closet comic strip artist and enjoys deep sea fishing.