Nairobi, April 30 -- Size isn't everything. Evah Kimani will be the first to tell you this. She is not a big woman. "People always think I am not serious because of my size," she says.

"When you're tiny, people think you're too young. They think you don't have the right content."

She has spent the better part of two decades in corporate Kenya quietly disproving that assumption, first as a programmer, then in product management, then climbing the ranks of the insurance industry, until last year when she became CEO and principal officer of Britam Connect, the newly licensed micro-insurance subsidiary of one of East Africa's largest financial services groups.

The business she now leads has insured over four million Kenyans, commands more ...