The lovely Julie Gichuru...

Herein is the story of us trying to beat time, traffic and slow pedestrians in a bid to meet Julie Gichuru, Well, not really a story, but you'll flow with it. Seriously though, how crazy is Nairobi traffic? it's on days such as these that you ask yourself when Kenyans bought all these cars, but, I digress...Julie(smiley face..again) so when we finally make it to the citizen studios, go through the proper procedural security check(probably to establish that they were not unleashing crazy folk on one of the most watched tv personalities in kenya and probably the greater East Africa!), the only expressions plastered on our faces were..yes, you guessed it!..smiley faces. At the spur of the moment I tried coming up with the proper adjective to describe this woman and the only thing I came up with was BEAUTIFUL! not cute or preety but sheer beauty, and what makes it so amazing is that she was super friendly and extremely down to earth and this became even clearer as we got to know more about her.

She is a strong ,independent career woman with an extraordinary head on her shoulders(a head with pretty amazing hair I might add..but you knew that already), an amazing mother and most importantly, she is a child of God.This is what we gathered.

The career;

A career in the media industry was definitely not in her trajectory but hey, she's here and she's most definitely working it. Having pursued a degree in law and an MBA from cardiff business school, university of wales, she simply stumbled upon it and she loves it. As is the case with all careers there have to be highs and lows. One of her highs is that she appreciates that she has the opportunity to help the regular mwananchi find his voice and be heard infact she says that she's probably more nervous when she has to interview the regular mwananchi than when she is to interview some politician or a high profile celebrity..weird right? she is not the kind to dwell on challenges as she prefers to deal with them head on but she however states that the one challenge that comes to mind the most and it kind of bothers her a bit was, that she regrets not having had the opportunity to spend time with her kids as they were growing up in the pursuit of building her career, you know, their first tomato bite, their first baby steps and stuff like that but she tries to be the best mother she can be because there's simply no job greater than that. The move from local media house NTV was also a challenge because she simply felt that she needed to work somewhere that dealt with key issues in society and at that time the post election violence was rampant and citizen tv awarded her the opportunity to deal with such issues head on, as is apparent in her previous show fist to five.

'Looking back however this was never really an issue because I dealt with it the best way I knew how', she said.

The other good stuff;

She loves music,all genres of music. she can listen to everything and anything in fact she had just finished downloading the ol skool' jams the night before(durang durang, bon jovi, ACDC et cetra). She loves stretching, not yoga per se but just stretching and she simply loves spending time with her children(you can seriously tell that she simply adores them. Her face lights up every time she talks about them...super cute!)

Other than anchoring and media she is also involved in her foundation, that she set up with her husband called theAnthony-Julie foundation that they recently changed name to the footprints foundation that deals with key issues involving the youth of Kenya. Examples of projects they're involved in include the great debaters contest in collaboration with the Jamhuri peace foundations to get young people discussing serious governance issues, there is also the Natembea project whose aim was to put a pair of shoes on children who could not afford them as well as the dettol hygiene project( you've all probably seen the advert).

Julie is at a point in her life where she loves the woman she has become. She doesn't have to worry about her insecurities or her flaws. Her mantra is working on what she can change and what she cannot well, there is nothing to do but embrace it!

The Fashion.

We all agree that Julie will look fabulous on any given Sunday(You must be out of your mind if you don't!).

Where she shops? everywhere and anywhere..doesn't matter if it goes for 2 bob. If it looks good,she'll buy (ladies don't we apply to that principle?)She doesn't like to buy extremely expensive stuff, but she will indulge once in a while.

."...at the end of the day I'm a mother and I'm aware that there other things that I have to spend money on. sometimes you look at a pair of shoes or a dress and you say to yourself that that could pay school fees for a child somewhere.it doesn't take a whole lot to look good .It just takes being clever to be able to mix and match to make something work for you"

The one thing she'd absolutely have if she got stranded in a remote Island would be a notebook and a pen(I would go for the endless supply of chicken wings...but that's just me!) because she writes a lot and a bible because it's got so many amazing stories.

And finally...

The one thing that she learnt from her job is that everyone has an opinion or a perspective of how things should be. What's important is that we learn to respect these opinions and that challenges in life are only there to make you stronger what you need is a strong support system and a ridiculous amount of prayer.Now is this an amazing woman or is this an amazing woman?

The uhidaya crew sharing a laugh with Julie