Sharon Mitchener, a Kenyan native, has an in-depth background in financial systems and risk strategy and management, and has parlayed her 25 years’ experience in the financial sectors to founding several initiatives in the evolving and robust field of visual arts.

Before founding an artists-oriented enterprise known as The Image Foundry in 2010, Sharon served as a consulting programme manager for USAID & GiZ, advising the Kenya Government on its communications and training strategy for its Public Procurement parastatal, PPOA. Before that, Sharon was a financial consultant with The World Bank in Washington D.C, driving the organizations implementation of enterprise-wide reporting financial systems. Prior to The World Bank, Sharon worked as an independent consultant providing financial advisory services to US fortune 100 companies such as Delta Airlines, Cingular Wireless, MCI WorldCom and Newell Rubbermaid.

Sharon began her career in financial management consulting, specializing in information technology, at Coopers & Lybrand, now PricewaterhouseCoopers, Kenya, before moving on to KPMG, USA, carrying out the same specialty. An Economics graduate, Sharon is also a Fellow with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA).

Currently, Sharon runs a one-of-a-kind digital platform called The Image Foundry. This is a platform that aims to Educate, Empower and Engage African visual artists on the continent. This is a platform that seeks to explore all contemporary aspects of visual arts from an African perspective, and disseminate education pertaining primarily to the specialty of photography. Additionally, the platform showcases artworks and artists from the African continent via a digital publication, as well as commercially empowering its artists by engaging with digital market places and exhibition spaces to find collectors for their works. The Image Foundry also sources and oversees commercial filming engagements for its Kenya-based photographers and videographers. Concurrently, Sharon continues to be actively involved in the financial sector, periodically engaging in consultancies that revolve around financial and economic research, risk assessment and mitigation.