Your Happy Hour - Remember The Why

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

In this episode, we chat to Nelson Amenya - Kenyan strategy consultant, whistleblower, and public interest advocate who gained international recognition in 2024 for exposing a controversial $2 billion infrastructure deal between the Adani Group and the Kenyan government. His investigative work led him into an unexpected journey and one in which accountability and having a supportive network is crucial in continuing to make a social impact on the world. He also shared his current side-projects working on expanding air travel across the African continent.The Feels is all about having those honest conversations, the power of community for personal growth and taking those actionable steps towards being our authentic selves.Thanks for tuning in! Keep it raw and real out there xYHH is produced by swartkat.co - captured via riverside.fm & shared via rss.com.

It's the Friday Feels and we're back with your first sip of the weekend. You're now tuned in to this week's episode of your happy hour. I'm your host Nicole Carmine and it's amazing to have you here. Joining me this week as we uncover the truths about being a human and a working professional. What are you up to this Friday? Well, whatever it is, this moment is just for you. And we're back with another episode of the Feels Podcast, your happy hour, and we are still talking about the theme, relieving, achieving.

And today I have a really special guest to join me to chat about this. I'm so pleased to have made Nelson through a fellow South African friend who I randomly met here in Paris. Nothing like random. It's all kind of meant to be. and for us to have this chat today. So I want to welcome Nelson, Armenia, you to the field space and your Happy Hour podcast.

It's really wonderful to have you here. I know you've got such an incredible bio. I can't wait to dive into this conversation and hear what this topic means to you. So a big, big welcome. Thank you so much, Nicole. And thanks for having me. And of course, thanks to Vincent for making this happen.

I'm excited for the call. and, you know, for the discussion ahead. Oh, amazing. And, yeah, I wanted to actually just dive in a little bit. I know you've shared a little bit of with me of what you've done and your journey. But I do feel like you can tell the story a lot better than I can. I know you do strategy consulting work. You've been like a public interest advocates and a lot of different things.

But maybe just tell us a little bit about like what brought you to this place where you are today and what's your journey been like? I don't know, it's always a long story for me. I'll try to keep it short. Yeah, so I did an undergraduate in Kenya and it was in graphic design and advertising. So I'm basically a designer. I was working in CAFO as head of design and branding department for about four and a half years before I decided to call it quits. it was a great stint but I felt like I needed a bigger challenge and to do that I thought maybe I should do an MBA so that's how I landed in Paris my my boss and my director were very supportive actually because both of them were alumni of HC Paris so it was quite easy to make the you know the transition to Paris so in 2020. 23 August, I joined HEC from my MBA. So I was in my MBA for 16 months.

During my MBA, something happened. So I became a whistleblower and it was, you know, it became global news because I exposed a $2 billion deal that was between the Kenyan government and an Indian conglomerate called Adani. So I went public with the information and the documents and eventually. Eventually it was cancelled along with another contract that they had already signed with Kenya. So in total it was about $3 billion. So from there onwards, my journey has been not normal.

I thought I'll finish my MBA, join MBB, become a consultant. The path was all set for me. As a normal MBA student or the career path is always almost the same. same for all of them, but for me it was a bit different. Yeah, so I finished my stint at CAFO, joined my MBA in Paris, in the middle, I, you know, became a global news item. And then, well, right now I do independent consulting. I consult for different companies like Global Resilience Partnership, who's, they provide funding for climate resilient projects and also agricultural innovation in the global south. So I do

mentorship and also some innovation work as well for them. I also provide advisory for some high net worth individuals based in Dubai and mostly they invest in Africa. So that's why, you know, that's where I come in. Yeah. So this is a short description of who I am and what I'm currently doing. Lastly, I also to have a small, I call it a paid project because it's not yet big. So I'm trying to map out demand for low-cost carriers, so low-cost airlines in Africa, because traveling across Africa is so expensive and fragmented. So the market is not consolidated, like, for example, Europe. Take, for example, traveling from Paris to London is, it could be like 40 euro or 30, like, very cheap.

But if you take the same distance in Africa, it could be maybe 400 euro. So it's ridiculously expensive. And I'm trying to map demand for low-cost airlines so that we can push policy makers to lower tariffs because some countries have extremely high tariffs. Like some countries in West Africa charge up to $300 per passenger. It's crazy. before the airfare for the airline you have to charge 300 because the government is taking so much money yeah so governments in africa needs to stop seeing air travel as a luxury but you know as a means of production and you know movement of goods and services and people yeah so that's my main objective and also to show the demand to investors or airlines that would come and you know make the insurance investment and make people move, you know, easily. The last thing about this one, African Sky project

is that Africa does not have enough rail travel, you know, rail infrastructure. It doesn't have enough roads across different countries, you know, interstate or international road network. So which means it's only airlines that would be the fastest way to influence. integration. Yeah. So that's why I'm doing this small pet project on the side. That is not small, but that's amazing. I really love that. And thank you for taking us on the journey. Wow. You've had quite a life story already. I mean, I'd like to dive into a little bit more of this theme. But before I do that, I'm curious what it felt like to you to be a whistleblower. I used to work in financial crime investigation before this change of life as well.

And I think a lot of people want to be anonymous, stay kind of in the shadows with them. And so it's really, I think, beautiful that you can embrace that and that you have stepped into saying, like, you know, I'm happy to speak up and look how your life has changed because of that, you know, and it should be celebrated that that's the case. So, yeah, how did that feel for you? Did it feel like a sense of achievement maybe or was, yeah, just share a little bit with us. I guess at that moment, it didn't feel like anything. It felt like, first of all, I didn't think it's going to be that big.

I thought, you know, it's going to be just creating some kind of awareness and that's it. Not, you know, nothing's going to happen. I am not really that consequential at the end of the day. So going into the expose or going into that whistleblowing, I didn't think it's going to make, you know, global headlines. I guess that's part of the reason why I did it, because I did not understand the magnitude of it. Yeah, but after, yes, of course it's a big achievement because the deals were cancelled. Eventually the public won, you know, over the private interests or corporate interests, which are not. never really aligned to public interest, you know, everywhere. It's not only in Kenya. So yeah,

I feel like it's a big achievement. And the fact that it brought me, it took me into another, you know, level. Like, as I told you, I was, my path was a bit, you know, my path was a normal MBA path, but now it's different. It's given me purpose, you know. My career is not just, you know, about making money, but about purpose and making social impact, which was really at the heart of, you know, what I was trying to achieve, but I didn't know how. So I thought maybe consulting will be the it to achieve in this. But now I'm doing it on my own because of, you know, the whistleblowing.

So the whistleblowing became like a platform for me to express what I always wanted to do. I love that the universe kind of gave you that opportunity. and you stepped into it, you took it. And last month we spoke about repurposing purpose and what it means to have a purpose. And, you know, kind of one of the last episodes I did by myself. And it was also just the exploration of the word purpose. And where that came from, it was kind of like this alignment.

We got to the point where we discovered that the word purpose really was always meant to be like what something is intended for in alignment. So I feel like you've really like stepped into alignment with that, you saw opportunity, you were given that, presented that, and you aligned with it. So how has that played out for you now, if we go back to the theme,

relieving, achieving, and what's that meant for you in your life? You know, maybe before all this happened or how it's changed after all this happened. Yeah, well, as we were speaking, you know, before we started to record, relieving the word. Yeah, so for me, I think

reliving achievement is, basically stopping it stopping the achievement from being like a drug like a achievement can be it's a it's a high right it's like being high so if you if you're not careful you might not stop chasing the high because once your app everybody is applauding you everyone is calling you a hero you're on the pages of you know global news outlets, you might be tempted to continue chasing the high. But it's important to relieve, you know, the achievement and come back, you know, to the fundamentals that led you to the achievement. By relieving that achievement and, you know, sort of like letting it go, then you set

yourself up for, you know, even more achievement because you're going back to the fundamentals. You're not, you know, chasing. It's very tempting to chase clicks and to chase likes, you know, and to chase praise. But it's important to relieve and go back to the basics. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think it's something that's hard for us humans to do because we conditioned to chase the dopamine, the high. And we feel good because other humans like us, you know.

And it's a strange experience, but in the end of the day, you have to feel good in your heart when you go to bed and you're like, okay, this is the reason I did that. So how do you find that you relieve that? Do you have like certain mechanisms or something that you tell yourself or, yeah, what's been like your journey in that? I think the most important thing for me is to have not really accountability partners, but to have people that can, I don't know if I should use this word, but people that can call out your job. bullshit so people that yeah can come to you and say I don't think you're making the right decision or you're doing the right thing maybe you need to change you know and do this so I have people like this and I'm very grateful for them but sometimes I know it's not easy to listen to what they have to say because it's not something that you know you're used to people praising you and you know telling you yeah you're doing the right thing continue but then other people will come and tell you no i don't think you should continue in that track maybe you should do this so that has been a very

big part of it and also just to sometimes stop and look at everything that is happening and try to think could i could i could i do something different or could i you know uh do some things better so that's really helpful not to just move you know, sometimes you just look at everything and analyze them. Yeah, I think that's great advice. And we don't often, last week, we spoke on the podcast. We also spoke to Siney and she was such a great guest. And she also spoke about the topic of making space to do that

because we don't do that often enough, you know. But I really love the accountability partners because I think that if you surround yourself with the right tribe for you. Yeah. And you might not agree with, like you say, with what everyone says, not have to listen to that because you have your own voice in your heart that you follow. But it's so important to keep perspective and people that really appreciate you and have good intentions and all of that. So what has been like the best advice that someone gave you along

your journey that you carry with you? I think it's not only one. If I think it's many small pieces of advice that I always remember along the way that I think keep keep me going and in different stages also of my life like during this moment you know when I was exposing Adani I was very close to my professor at school at HAC Paris and he has been really really helpful he was giving me very good advice you know on what I should do how I should interact with people he has been very instrumental to me me. And also, you know, there is, I have a friend who was, he's a former ambassador to Kenya from the US. And he, he is one of the people actually that keep, you know, me very accountable.

And one time he came to me and he told me that, so I used to post a lot on my ex account. And he was like, I think you should post maybe two to three times. a day and reply to all your comments. So in my mind, first of all, I was like, I get hundreds of comments per post. How will I get the time to reply to all those comments? Yeah, so, but if you think about it, then it means if you have to reply to all your comments, then you have to post less. So like post one, have one post and then reply to all the comments because there will be too many

for you to post another one. So this was kind of interesting to listen to. And he also told me one time. So I was posting a lot. You know, once you expose something, people are expectant of you to post more exposés, you know. So he gave me an example. He was in the Senate in the US and he kept, you know,

attacking people, to keep them accountable. And then one day, one of the elder senators called him and told him, we appreciate, you know, that you're very passionate and about your job. But sometimes you don't have to pick every fight. Don't pick every battle. Just, you know, don't make yourself a target of everyone by fighting everything. sometimes just let other people you know take the bullet so to say so to speak let them take the bullet

because if you put yourself as a target always then you might not last long you will die sooner but if you only choose your battles then it means you will have less targets on you and you will fight better and obviously you will have bigger impact so that was super helpful it kind kind of now brought the whole you know oh there was a lot of pressure for you to keep you know exposing other things but you know exposing more things means having more targets on your back and it means you're spreading yourself thin and you know a lot a lot is happening but if you only focus on the most important battles, you become more effective and you have more impact. I think that's such great advice, you know, and I can imagine that it's interesting because,

like, here was this opportunity that presented itself to you. It's not like you woke up one day and you were like, I'm now going to go chase these exquisites. You know, this is what I'm going to do for my life. But it came to you and you took the opportunity and that led you into the life you are now and that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to keep doing. that, you know, and I agree because I feel like often what happens when we try to achieve or look for that, those highs like we were talking about, you end up taking on so much more. You know, whether that's like you're an entrepreneur and you have like tons of ventures or you are, you know, working a 9 to 5 for someone and you keep taking on projects or you keep

saying, here I am, like be the yes man, you are going to burn out. You aren't going to get to a point where you're not necessarily looking after yourself and not taking aligned action. I was shouting to someone recently who was saying, you know, her word for the year is aligned action. And I think that's such a great thing to do when you're kind of looking for finding

what is your purpose in achievement as well. So, yeah, thanks for sharing that advice. And, you know, I was going to ask you, like, did you know you were going to do this 10 years ago, but your story is completely different. So I don't think that really, that question. 10 years ago, I was a designer. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

I mean, that's just wonderful to see, you didn't expect yourself to learn in this position. I feel like a lot of people kind of go from like more corporate to artistic and you've kind of, it seems like you've done the opposite, you know. That's true. Actually, I think I was the only graphic designer in the MBA. Like, there was lawyers, doctors, engineers, business people. I was already, you know, in management level in in car four. But it was in designing the arts because I was the head of department in a creative department. So yeah, it was quite peculiar to have me in a business school.

Yeah, and actually, I mean, it's something that I find artists need a lot of is understanding business, you know, because I often talk about this. But everyone should be an entrepreneur. As an artist, you are also an entrepreneur. and so we should be seeing more people as artists being able to embrace business side of things, you know, and I almost want to say like the public and the private, you know, the arts and the public coming together to create wonderful future for us. So, yeah, well, I mean, what do you feel is looking forward for you in the next year? Like, what can we celebrate with you as the field?

You know, it's, I always think. the future is unknown but we have to prepare for it you know by making plans and goals yeah so one of my goals actually in the next year I is to go back to Kenya like I would like you know like to visit Kenya because at the moment I'm not able to go to Kenya so I hope next by next year I'll be able to go back to Kenya you know also I hope my Pan-African sky project is going to be validated and we can, you know, push for policy change and try to push investment into, you know, low-cost careers in Africa. I know, like, for example, in South Africa, there is one, in Kenya, there is one low-cost airline, but they are too small to expand into

the African space. But also the policy needs to change. They cannot come into a space where policy is still very rigid and there is no integration in the airspace. Yeah, so I hope that changes in the next one year. And thirdly, I'm looking forward to actually working with one of my clients. They are looking to fund infrastructure projects, but it's very interesting what they want to do. they have a system that keeps governments accountable through their procurement systems. So for governments to receive funding, for example, for infrastructure, for roads, whatever,

they have to have at some level of transparency in their procurement systems. This is really cool. And yeah, I'm looking forward to how it will evolve in the coming year. Oh, that all sounds super exciting and we hope that you get to make it back to Kenya. When you do, tag us so we can celebrate with you. I mean, because we will let everyone know how to find you on the socials too. And for everyone listening, I wonder kind of what you're feeling

about this theme for the month, relieving, achieving, and how are you taking a moment to ground and what tribe do you have around you that is keeping you accountable? in those hard decisions. And I also want to give a quick shout out as a thank you to the people who make, keep us accountable and make this possible, which are our partners, and that is rsacs. They are our distribution partner. We get to share this podcast into the world through them.

And then also to Blender Bombs, which are these delicious snacks. And both of these companies have given our audience a beautiful discount. You can DM us on the socials, and especially for Blender Bombs, you get a 20% discount if you order some of their goodies. So thank you to them. Thank you for making it possible. And then I also would like to give what we do here, Nelson, is we call out person, place or space. We call it our PPS that have the feels. And this week shout out goes to, it's a franchise. They have about four different spots in Paris. I'm sure maybe you've been there. It's called Rosa Bonoitteur. And it's a really cool place to dance. There's two of them are like both.

boats on the Sen. And then there's one in Butchimon, which is a beautiful park. And I've had the pleasure of being, I love dancing. So it's, you were talking earlier about making people move and I was thinking about this. It's so important as humans to move our bodies and they have something going on every single day of the night, every single night of the week, rather, my goodness. I need more coffee today and except for Sundays. And it's really great to know that there's a space where you can go and move your body and in a wonderful place like Paris. So a big shout-out to Rosa Bonoitte for what you do, for bringing music and live acts and spaces to be moving and making moves.

So we love your feels. And then I want to move into a quick little section that we call our gems. Now, our James is like moments for you this week that you might have learned something or have gratitude. and mine has been, I had a friend visiting me from New York City and it's a very different life that I had when I met her and we've always kept in touch and it's been so wonderful to experience life together in our different phases

and it's also really helped me to kind of remember that we're here to celebrate life together, we're here to share life together and make space for that and yeah be able to grow together has just been really beautiful And so that was really a good dream for me to be able to hug her again in person. How about for you? Well, I guess for me, I'm very grateful for the people, my support system, my friends, I'm very grateful for my family and everyone that has been super supportive of me.

Because, you know, without a support system, you don't really have something to fall back to, you know, when you feel the weight of the world on you. So I'm very grateful to my friends who pick my calls and listen to my eventing, you know. Those people that will not tell me they're busy anytime, you know, when I need to meet, you know. Yeah, so I'm very grateful for such people in my life. That's amazing. Yeah, I think friendships are just incredible and like you say, family and support. And it's something we tend to take for granted sometimes, but I think it's, one of the key things when everything else falls away it's like that's what's left of life right so

important yeah yeah for them they have no they don't have any expectations of you yeah yeah yeah those are those are the those are the gems really the james in your life those people who just love you for who you are well that's beautiful i love that and i just have one more question for you thanks nelson for for sharing so much with us today and that is our reading list so we have a reading list called The Stack and it's on our website and every week we have guests come on and recommend books. It might be something that you've read and loved or maybe it's something that's on the pile and you haven't read it yet, but something you'd like to recommend to the audience. So I want to ask you, what is in your stack?

Oh my God, I have so many books. One, two, three, four, yeah, four books, five that I should read. So the one I'm reading now is France Fanon, the wretched of the earth. Ah, okay. Yeah. That looks interesting. Yeah, it's super interesting. Franz Fanon is very well known to the civil rights movement in the U.S.

And after the colonization period, he was very instrumental. His philosophy was very instrumental in the decolonization. and the civil rights movement. He was a French guy from Martinique, and he actually studied in Paris, and then worked in Algeria as a psychiatrist, I think. Yeah, it's a very interesting book. I've just finished reading another one of his books

called Black Ski and White Masks, and also super interesting. So this is my current read. I also have one book by a Kenyan author, very renowned Kenyan author. It's called Decolonizing the Language. It's a super interesting book. Yeah.

So, and other revolutionary stories, he puts out the idea that you need to learn your language like your mother tongue. And then you can learn all other languages. But if you don't know your own language and you know all other languages, then it's, well, it's, he, puts it as a form of colonization. So decolonizing the language means, you know, learning your own language on top of all the other languages that you've learned. Then away from revolution, so this is my favorite business book, actually. It's called Measure What Matters. It's brilliant. For anyone who wants to enter into business. Actually, it's for planning.

And it has a concept called the OKR's objectives and key results. It's amazing. It's an amazing book. I would 100% recommend this book if you haven't read it. Amazing. Those are such great recommendations. Thank you. I definitely want to delve a little bit more into one about language.

I'm fascinated by that as well. And we had someone on the podcast in season two who spoke about the idea of when a word doesn't exist in your language or in someone else's language and how that changes, how you interact as cultures. And yeah, it was fascinating. So I do believe that it's important to understand your language. And these revolutionary books are really intriguing. I feel like there's so much I need to learn about that in the world. So I'll be adding those to my stack as well. and for those who are listening,

you can check it out on the website and happy, happy reading to everyone out there. So very lastly, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on for sharing your heart and your story and just so openly and it's been so inspiring to chat to you and hear your journey.

It has been a pleasure to be on your podcast, Nicole, I loved it. Great discussion. Yeah, and I hope to, you know, meet face to face maybe in the dancing club sounds genial it sounds wonderful let's definitely do that we can enjoy Paris and for anyone who's coming to visit sometime let us know

and we'll take you there so have a great rest of this beautiful week we wish you all happy feels if you haven't just yet follow Friday feels on Instagram Facebook TikTok and LinkedIn, you can share with us all your fields this week by tagging us at Friday fields.com. And you can also find the website at that handle. And now as you ease into this weekend, take a moment. Celebrate who you've become, what you've overcome and what is yet to come as you do the crazy and cool things that you do as the authentic you. As the authentic you, You know the truth about life and work is that it's hard, but the beauty is this global

working experience that you're in while we're in it together. So keep connecting, empowering and inspiring this week. And of course, keep it raw and real. Until next time.