About Us

BUILT IN THE HOME OF CHAMPIONS

Enda was founded with a mission of bringing a bit of Kenyan athletic excellence to runners everywhere and fuelling economic development in Kenya. We developed the world's greatest running shoes incorporating the country’s running history, culture and skills, while at the same time creating jobs. We're initially assembling the shoes in Kenya, with a long-term vision of having the shoes 100% made in Kenya.

We started with a Kickstarter campaign in May and June 2016, and are shipping our first pairs in May 2017.

CO-FOUNDERS: NAVALAYO OSEMBO-OMBATI AND WELDON KENNEDY

Nava comes from a village near Eldoret, Kenya, where many of Kenya’s running champions come from. A graduate of the London School of Economics, Navalayo has worked in different places around the world, including the US, UK, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya. She is trained as both an accountant and a lawyer, which explains why she is so interested in risk management, results-based management and writing. 

Weldon is a social-change campaigner who has worked on a range of early stage social change startups. After gaining business experience as Managing Director of Change.org in Europe, he co-founded Enda with the belief Kenya should receive greater benefit from it's reputation as a running powerhouse. His half marathon PB is 1:37:39.

DESIGN: DAN RICHARD

Dan Richard Design is a group of experienced professionals who are passionate about creating successful product solutions. They are students of the consumer – product – brand relationship and believe that gaining insight from these interactions is imperative to creating great design. They have deep knowledge of the footwear industry. Over decades of work, they have used their experience and approach to design to develop award winning product for clients around the world.

ASANTE

There are more people than we can count who have helped Enda since our inception. However, there are a couple of people to whom we owe a special thanks for their help in our Kickstarter campaign. The first are people who backed our campaign without reward, simply contributing as a vote of support that Enda should exist. The second are our “Harambee Champions”, people who signed up to recruit others to the campaign and collectively brought in more than 100 new backers to the campaign. 

To both groups, asante sana. Thank you.

KICKSTARTER BACKERS

Nadir Shams
Aaron Tait
Tim Lo Surdo
Ruthie Rosenberg
Michael Davis
Adam Conner
Jay Taneja
Luca Francescangeli
Patrick Schmitt
Nick Allardice
Franziska Seel
Ben Phillips
Thom and Michelle Wallace
Matthew McGregor
Shannon Carroll
Dan Schreter
Sasha Kinney
Tom Allen
Zachary B
Patrick Morton
Tom Baker
Mark Samburg
Emily Alpert
Sarah Soulie
Tom Farrand
Paul Sullivan