There are two things that Mary Njoki holds in esteem above all, three that make her holy trifecta: I.) Thinking. II). God. III.) Rebellion. Mary, she tells me, means “rebellion,” a paradox because Mary has always been a good-girl name, besides the point, yes, but at the same time, the whole point.
Isn’t it why at 16, she had already finished school? Or at 19, was fit, fired up, and running next to the hamster in the corporate wheel? Or why, at 23, she founded Glass House PR, a pan-African PR firm headquartered in Kenya? “People would perceive PR as events, but it’s not. It’s more about strategic thinking,” she says. Of course, of course. The problem with interviewing a PR honcho is that one of you is dancing like nobody is watching and the other is dancing like everybody’s watching. It’s Jedi vs Padawan. Many a time, I prodded, inviting her to set a hare running but she was cautious—nay, strategic—as if to say that slander by the stream will be heard by the frogs.
