{"id":999898,"date":"2026-01-22T14:50:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T11:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/?p=999898"},"modified":"2026-01-27T14:11:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T11:11:39","slug":"education-to-take-you-places-hannah-karanjas-journey-from-the-middle-east-to-entrepreneurship-in-kenya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/education-to-take-you-places-hannah-karanjas-journey-from-the-middle-east-to-entrepreneurship-in-kenya\/","title":{"rendered":"Education to Take You Places: Hannah Karanja\u2019s journey from the Middle East to entrepreneurship in Kenya"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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By Alumni Relations Department<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Hannah Karanja is a customer service and customer experience specialist with a career spanning aviation, financial services and corporate Africa. She graduated from USIU-Africa in 1992 with a Bachelor\u2019s degree in International Relations, then travelled to the Middle East to work with Gulf Air in Bahrain. What was meant to be a four-year adventure before returning home to pursue her master\u2019s degree became the foundation of a lifelong career in service, leadership and facilitation. While working in aviation, Hannah completed a Master of Arts in Air Transport Management from City University of London, strengthening her understanding of operations, safety and service delivery in complex environments.<\/p>

At Gulf Air, she moved into training and facilitation, starting with Crew Resource Management (CRM), which focuses on communication, teamwork, leadership and decision-making in high pressure situations. She later transitioned into Customer Service training, helping teams build positive intelligence, problem solving skills and trust with customers.<\/p>

She also worked in Performance Management, coaching frontline staff and leaders on accountability, feedback and consistency. Of all these disciplines, customer service became her greatest passion because it sits at the intersection of human emotion and business performance.<\/p>

After Gulf Air, Hannah joined American Express Middle East Premium Services, working in a world class customer service environment serving high value card members under exceptionally high standards.<\/p>

She returned to Kenya in 2016 and co-founded Hacyna Consultancy, where she now helps organizations increase revenue, loyalty and team performance by improving how employees show up in customer moments.<\/p>

In 2025, Hannah published her first book, Dear Customer, We\u2019ve Got This! a practical and human centered guide to handling customers with empathy, clarity and confidence, especially in moments of frustration and uncertainty. The book is now available in the USIU-Africa Library and Information Centre.<\/p>

Hannah is also a Certified Positive Intelligence Coach, a discipline that trains people to shift from self-sabotage and stress into calm, clarity and effective action. Positive Intelligence builds mental fitness so individuals and teams can respond rather than react, making it a powerful foundation for customer service, leadership and resilience.<\/p>

She is also a certified I Am Remarkable facilitator, delivering workshops that help people overcome self-doubt, communicate their value and show up with greater confidence at work and in life. One of her proudest contributions is her work as a volunteer trainer with Rise Up Now, a Kilifi based charity that empowers children to say NO to societal vices and YES to positive life choices.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alumni Relations Department Hannah Karanja is a customer service and customer experience specialist with a career spanning aviation, financial services and corporate Africa. She graduated from USIU-Africa in 1992 with a Bachelor\u2019s degree in International Relations, then travelled to the Middle East to work with Gulf Air in Bahrain. What was meant to be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":999875,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-999898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=999898"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1000014,"href":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999898\/revisions\/1000014"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/999875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=999898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=999898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/197.137.64.198\/mainsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=999898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}