Sheila Sendeyo Returns to Her Depth

Verah Okeyo is an award-winning global health journalist and media and communications strategist with over 15 years of experience across mainstream media, research institutions, and international health organisations in... Learn more

During her stint at NTV, Sheila Sendeyo’s reporting stood out for one thing: her captivating scripts. The subjects she took on – environment, climate change and human rights violations – would have been banal and nondescript had it not been for Ms Sendeyo’s craft.

Global health, the subject Defrontera is in business for, can be boring. It is for this reason that, when FT Strategies informed us that video storytelling would be key to reaching our North Star of 10,000 policymakers in three years, Ms Sendeyo’s skills were welcome. It is in this context that Defrontera is pleased to introduce Sheila as Defrontera’s Senior Producer and Head of Visuals. In this capacity, she will lead the organisation’s multiplatform visual storytelling across YouTube and social media. She will also lead the broadcast partnerships that Defrontera has with other TV stations in Kenya.

Sheila said: “Years of global storytelling have now led me to Defrontera, where my craft sharpens into something bolder – a space where I can shape stories that push the boundaries of how healthcare and policy meet.”

Sheila brings a character that is becoming rarer by the day: discipline that ensures she starts and finishes a project. It is this focus that enables her to sift through the noise that has crowded the media landscape, especially in reporting on healthcare and global health. This discipline has been evident throughout her career, from Citizen TV, where her stories never lost focus on the patient, the child or the mother in her stories, even when there were other dominant characters. At Nation Media Group, she evolved from editor to editorial strategist, with her work prioritising depth over what is viral. We have already seen this depth in the two series that she has led: the tuberculosis series with rapper Juliani and an in-depth report on hypertensive disorders in Kenya.

A graduate of the University of Nairobi, with advanced leadership training from the BBC and Strathmore University, Sheila’s work has been recognised by the Media Council of Kenya and the Global Investigative Journalism Network.

Sheila will work closely with the Editor-in-Chief, Anne Mawathe.

Please join us in welcoming Sheila.

— Verah and Anne.

Announcements, Sheila Sendeyo