Meet the Founders
Captain of Curious Minds AKA Chief Executive Officer
Jacqui Thuku is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Bambaverse, a digital playground where learning gets a glow-up. With over 20 years in the teaching profession, she brings a treasure trove of classroom wisdom, creativity, and care to everything she builds.
When she’s not shaping the future of learning at Bambaverse, Jacqui teaches Year 7–13 students in the UK, turning classrooms into curiosity labs and helping young minds discover their power. Equal parts educator, strategist, and dream-builder, she leads Bambaverse with a mission to make education fun, fearless, and deeply rooted in transformative education.
She designs learner-centred systems that spark critical thinking, digital confidence, and creativity; bridging education through inclusive and tech-powered ideas. Whether she’s geeking out over edtech tools or dreaming up the next cultural sandbox, Jacqui is all about access, equity, and imagination.
If Shuri from Wakanda opened a school for young geniuses, with afro-comics in one hand and a Raspberry Pi in the other, you’d see Jacqui’s dream in motion.
Thayù is a reclusive but radiant storyteller, cultural strategist, and creative technologist with a flair for turning the impossible into play. Rooted in social impact and artistic rebellion, Thayù blends folklore with firmware, community, and creativity into bold, Afro-futuristic experiences.
Thayù has authored 16 children’s books (with enough personality to raise an army of curious minds), 3 poetry collections, 4 comics, 2 photo comics, and 2 anthologies, because one medium is never enough. Whether it’s crafting a 400-page augmented reality festival in a book, building bizarrely brilliant digital worlds, or molding clay into emotion, Thayù’s work is a passport to many dimensions.
As an AI enthusiast, they treat technology as a creative co-pilot, pushing boundaries with ethical, inclusive tools that amplify African voices. One of their most groundbreaking projects? A 400-page augmented reality festival in a book, the first of its kind. Their love affair with AI isn’t just geeky, it’s revolutionary, channeling emerging tech to amplify African voices and rewire how we learn, dream, and connect.
They founded Creatives Garage, which has supported over 15,000 creatives across Africa, and built platforms like Kalabars, Baiskeli, and Sondeka Festival to amplify cultural voices. Their projects; Femmolution, That Other Place, Blooms in the Dark, and Sondeka ALT, reimagine storytelling as resistance, play, and power.
Basically, if Sun Ra, Makmende, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o had a brainchild raised on afrofuturism, jazz, and childhood wonder, it might look a little like Thayù.
Chief Mischief Maker AKA Chief Creative Technologist
Strategic Firestarter AKA Chief Strategist Officer
Wangari is the resident Power Shifter at Bambaverse, Pan-African feminist, grantmaker extraordinaire, and fierce believer that philanthropy needs a radical remix. By day, she steers the Kenya and Uganda portfolio at Segal Family Foundation, managing $1.3M in annual grants like a boss with heart. Before that? She helped raise a jaw-dropping $31M through grant proposals that actually made sense (and made change).
She doesn’t just whisper about change; she builds it, opens the gates wide, and invites everyone in. Her tool of choice? Conversation rooted in care.
She holds degrees in Economics & Anthropology from Rhodes University, plus an an Economics Honours degree, and masters in Development Studies from Nelson Mandela University, where she dove deep into feminist economic theory (because the future is feminist (and AI) and she’s got the receipts).
Wangari also serves on the steering committee of the International Education Funders Group and sits on the boards of Justice Nest Kenya and ORAM Kenya. As Chief Strategy Officer at Bambaverse, she brings big vision, sharp thinking, and fierce purpose to every plan we hatch.
Basically, if the spirit of Mnyazi wa Menza met a spreadsheet and a vision board, that's Wangari in action.