By Brenda Kageni
How often do you get a name like Milcah and get to be boss of one the largest milk processing company in the country? Milcah Mugo is the current acting Managing Director of New KCC, an embattled parastatal, and has been riding the crest of the waves that have rocked it since December last year. Interestingly, she says that it was the best time for her to come to the helm as she has learnt and grown through the crisis.
"It has pushed me to think strategically and I’ve learnt to handle crisis," says Milcah.
It’s been very hard to get an interview with her in the last few weeks, as she seemed to be in one board meeting after another.
A gentle, polite and friendly Milcah finally meets Woman’s Instinct. She is very accommodating and gracefully offers us tea and yoghurt in her Nairobi’s Industrial Area office as we settle for the interview.
Growing up
Milcah was born and grew up in Dagoretti to parents who owned and ran a slaughterhouse, the mainstay of the economy in that area. The second born in a family of eight, she attended Precious Blood High School-Riruta in 1977.
In 1981 she joined India’s Poona University for a Bachelor of Commerce degree. On completion, she decided to change her career to Law, and enrolled for a Bachelor of Law degree at the same university.
She explains: "When you are young and your parents are not so learned, you may not be able to make the right decision. I felt like I could do better in Law and I was also inspired by lawyers I had met."
Her first job was at Chawla and Company Advocates where she worked as an advocate for a year before joining the then KCC as a legal officer.
Says she: "I set up the legal department of KCC. By then the company secretary was not a lawyer."
She worked for KCC for 10 years but when the company begun experiencing a lot of political interference, she left and went into private practice in her law firm, G.M Mugo and Company Advocates where she practised for about five years before leaving to join Sony Sugar in Awendo as the company secretary in June 2002.
"It wasn’t an easy move. I had to leave my son in the care of my sister in Nakuru. When my sister got married soon afterwards, I had to take him to boarding school," she says.
New responsibilities
It was after the Narc government bought KCC from the owners and appointed a new board and MD that Milcah re-joined New KCC, this time as the company secretary in 2004.
Just as the milk glut was hitting the industry she took over as acting MD.
Says she: "We were not able to handle all the milk that was coming in. We received the highest amounts of milk ever since 2003. Most of the emergency expansion plans we had for El Nino had not taken off and we were having an excess of over two million litres of milk. With 680,000 litres coming in everyday, our silos were full and the factories running for 24 hours."
With nine out of 11 factories operating with machinery aged between 20-70 years, the challenge was great. Through this time, she has learnt to most appreciate the strength in human resource.
"There is a tendency to value other assets more but I have learnt what human resource can do. I realised I needed people at all levels working round the clock. We couldn’t recruit people overnight; we had to push each other — the milk kept coming, the farmers kept queuing," she says.
She acknowledges that a lot of times, they have had to sell at a loss. She quips: "The alternative is pouring the milk. We prefer to just give it out for free."
"We anticipate lots of milk till next month. Again at some point things got so political and we have been in crisis management situation throughout, attending meetings and issuing statements. But it has been a good challenge," she adds.
Lessons
Ask Milcah her most appreciated skill in her work right now and she immediately says — people relations.
"I respect hierarchy and protocol, but I believe in working with people at all levels. I don’t believe in breaking people into groups. The tea girl has a lot of information that can help this company. I always go out and talk to farmers. A lot of the information they give even surprises the managers," says Milcah.
She likes educating needy children and hopes that in the future she can be able to support a child partly or fully through high school and university.
"I am a mother of a 10-year-old son and I see a lot of children who need support. My prayer is that I can support one child every year," she says.
Since her father passed on, Milcah has taken the responsibility for leading the family and supporting in the family business that her mother and siblings now manage, a task she says is quite difficult.
Personal challenges
Greater challenges however lie in managing success as a woman.
Says she: "The challenge for a woman is that people do not believe you can move to the highest heights without being a girlfriend to someone or coming from a certain tribe. In private legal practice too, you have to look for work. It gets challenging when men just look at you as the girl, not the professional."
As a solution she calls on women to appreciate themselves, to support each other and to challenge the men — even if the men will not initially appreciate it.
"Men think we can’t change a punctured tyre or a bulb. Start by challenging such thinking and they will begin to respect you," she says.
