Jacqueline Muna Musiitwa

Kenya

Occupational Information

Occupation: Lawyer

Occupational Position: Founder and Managing Partner at Hoja Law Group

Professional History

Jacqueline Muna Musiitwa, Esq. is the Founder and Managing Partner at Hoja Law Group, a boutique law firm in New York, USA, and Kigali, Rwanda, advising on commercial matters for companies doing business in Africa as well as African governments. Hoja Law Group represents government entities, businesses, and non profits in corporate and intellectual property matters. It represents clients in the United States, Europe and Africa, drafting a variety of legal documents, country entry strategy, risk and so on.  She is also the Chief Advisor at Rio Tinto.

Previously, she was Legal Counsel and Assistant to the President and CEO of the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank (PTA Bank). She started her career at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP as a corporate and securities associate. She has served as an advisor to the Director General of the World Trade Organization on trade policy and private sector development for Least-developed Countries as well as an advisor to the Rwandan Minister of Justice on investment, trade and infrastructure.

In 2019, she was appointed to United Nations Committee for Development Policy. The Comittee for Development Policy is a subsidiary of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and advises the Council on a wide range of issues that are relevant for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. She was also appointed as an Independent Non-Executive Director on the Board of the International Rescue Committee (IRC)

Jacqueline has also been an Adjunct Professor of Law at universities in the U.S. and Rwanda. Jacqueline is a thought leader, speaker and writer on African affairs. She is a Young Global Leader (YGL) 2011 (World Economic Forum) and a 2012 Mo Ibrahim Foundation Leadership fellow.  In 2012, she was named one of the 99 most influential foreign policy leaders under the age of 33 by the Diplomatic Courier and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy and in 2014 a New Voices fellow (Aspen Institute). She serves on a number of boards, such as to the nonprofit design company, IDEO and LSE-listed South African vanadium mining company, Bushveld Minerals.

She also helped start a network of female legal and business professionals called LABFA

Qualifications

BA, Davidson College
JD, University of Melbourne
Executive education at the Said Business School, Oxford University and the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Programs

2011 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow