Nairobi, May 3 -- She was 17 years old, a brand-new mother, and convinced that her life was over. Decades later, Evalyn Oloo sits across from you cracking jokes about being fired from a Cambridge pub for mixing up drinks, and tells you she would not change a single thing. Not the teenage pregnancy, not the two jobs and full-time studies she ran simultaneously, nor the hundred portable massage chairs she ordered from China. Not a single moment.

Across town, Annmaria Kerubo traces her entire career back to a throwaway comment her mother made when she was a small girl frozen in front of a screen. Her mother joked about whether she was training to become a computer engineer. Annmaria was not joking back.

As we close the International Girls ...