Mike Eldon is founder chairman and lead consultant of The DEPOT (The Dan Eldon Place Of Tomorrow), a management consultancy that focuses on leadership, strategy, change management, culture strengthening, performance management and coaching. He is also sought after as a speaker and writer on these and other topics.
He is the chairman of Occidental Insurance and an independent director of Davis & Shirtliff, which is in the water and energy sectors. There he chairs its Board Audit Risk and Compliance Committee.
He is a co-founder of the Institute for Responsible Leadership, which was launched in London in October 2019; and is the author of a chapter titled “Emotional Intelligence, Social Cohesion and Responsible Leadership” in the book on Responsible Leadership to be published by Routledge in 2022.
In March 2021 he was listed as one of the 25 most influential chairman in Kenya by Business Monthly Magazine, where he was ranked at No 10 (read the 2021 article | download the 2021 magazine cover). Then in March 2022 he featured at No 9 (download the 2022 magazine cover). And in March 2023 he was ranked as the 10th most impactful chair of boards influencing business.
Mike is an economics graduate of University College London and a Sloan Fellow of the London Business School. He entered the IT field in 1967, arriving in Kenya in 1977 to become general manager of multinational computer company ICL, and he has lived there ever since. He was a pioneer in the development of the use of IT in Kenya, and was deeply involved with the development of Kenya’s first national ICT policy.
Nineteen years ago he reinvented himself as a management consultant, and his clients include national and county government, public and private sector organisations, family businesses, NGOs, the World Bank and GIZ.
He is an adjunct faculty member at Strathmore Business School; a Senior Leadership Adviser to the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR); and was an adjunct faculty member in the development and delivery of the transformative leadership programme for the Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications in their joint initiative with the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a Global Partner of the World Bank’s Collaborative Leadership for Development initiative, where he has run high level workshops on leadership in Kenya and beyond, as well as being an executive coach.
He has been chairman of the Council of KCA University, and chairman of the Council of the Kenya Institute of Management, where he is a Fellow of the Institute. He was a founding director and later vice-chairman of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (Kenya’s private sector umbrella body), where he is now a member of the Advisory Council and of the Nominating Committee; and he is a founder member of The Management Consultants Association of Kenya. He has also been a director of KEMI (the Kenya Education Management Institute) and of AFIDEP (the African Institute for Policy Development), a think tank that supports the actualisation of the Demographic Dividend.
Since 2007 he has been writing a column for Business Daily, having now published over 450 articles; and his 2009 book Kenyans, Yes we Can! is a collection of his articles and speeches. Mike is married to Evelyn Mungai, the author of From Glass Ceilings to Open Skies, for which he was the editor. In 2021 the Women on Boards Network presented him with the 1st Runner Up Award for being Male Champion of the Women’s Agenda.