Let’s rewind. I announced publicly that I was venturing into corporate MCing with the confidence of a man who had absolutely no business being that confident. Armed with undergraduate degree in Chemistry, an irrelevant work experience to the industry and hosting experience so short it barely qualified as a paragraph, let alone a portfolio. No godfather in an industry stacked with journalists, comedians and creative influencers who’d been building their names since before I knew what a lapel mic was. Bold? Sure. Reckless is probably closer to the truth. I walked into a room I hadn’t been invited to and started talking like I owned the place.

So there I was at this gathering, and I spot a guy I half recognized from Instagram. Tall, bubbly, the kind of energetic that makes you wonder when exactly he sleeps, because 90% of his feed was reels and memes and the remaining 10% was him quietly being serious about work. We struck up small talk. Thirty minutes later we were still at it, because apparently small talk does pay, contrary Nyashinski’s belief

We parted ways without exchanging contacts. Obviously. You don’t ask a stranger for their number at a social gathering unless you’re trying to get slapped or misunderstood, possibly both. The next day, he messaged me on Instagram to check that I’d gotten home safely. Then, somehow, work came up.

I still don’t fully know why he cared.

A few weeks later we bumped into each other again and he called me out, properly called me out, for not amplifying what I did online. He talked at me for what felt like a TED talk’s worth of unsolicited conviction, and the entire time I kept thinking: why does what I do matter so much to this stranger? I didn’t have an answer then. I’m not sure I have a complete one now. I asked for a proper sit down. He didn’t hesitate. Booked the date, booked the venue, his club, on the spot, like he’d been waiting for me to ask.

When we met, he didn’t do the thing mentors do where they speak slightly down to you, dressed up as wisdom. He spoke to me like a peer. Like someone who’d already seen the thing I hadn’t found yet. He stood me by a clear glass wall overlooking Westlands and said something I have never been able to shake: “There are companies in Westlands and beyond who desperately need your services, you just need to learn how to speak their language.”

That was it. That was the whole pitch. No certificate. No formal mentorship agreement. Just a man, a view, and a sentence that rearranged my entire sense of what was possible.

His name is Bright Gameli Mawudor, PhD , and from that conversation onward, he tracked my hosting journey like he had something personally at stake in it. Every event. Every new company willing to hand me their stage. He kept count when I’d stopped bothering to.

Fast forward to a SACCO CEOs forum in Mombasa. I’m standing there as the official MC for a week long conference, and there he is, one of the speakers on the agenda. Full circle doesn’t even cover it. The man who once told me a stranger should believe in my potential was now sitting in the audience I was commanding, because he’d decided years earlier that this was where I belonged.

140 plus events later, we’re still in each other’s orbit, now building a cybersecurity summit together this August, something he’s dreamed about for years and I get to co-host like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

I don’t know what made a stranger decide my potential was worth carrying. I’m not sure I’m supposed to know. What I do know is that I wouldn’t be writing this newsletter, wouldn’t have stood on those 140 plus stages, wouldn’t be a corporate MC at all in any version of this story that doesn’t have him in it.

So here’s what I want to leave you with,Have you had a destiny carrier? Someone who saw something in you before you saw it yourself, who tracked your growth like it was their business when it absolutely wasn’t. And if you have. Have you told them?

Not a vague “grateful for the people who believed in me” caption. Told them.

Bright Gameli Mawudor, PhD – Thank You!