Yvonne Okwara Matole is a household name in Kenya that every young and aspiring media personality would fancy and emulate. Like how the Swahili saying goes ‘Ukiona vyaelea jua vumeundwa’, Yvonne’s brand is the result of many years of sacrifice, hard work, discipline and resilience.
The star media persona, who spreads energy through utter eloquence and genius in her Tonight Show on Thursdays on Citizen TV, has been in the industry for 15 years now– according to the Citizen Digital website.
A holder of Bsc. in Microbiology, Okwara joined Hot96, owned by Royal Media Services (RMS); as a presenter immediately after graduating in 2006. She used to host the World Music show on Saturday mornings before she started co-hosting the mid-morning show and finally the breakfast show.
Rising steadily, Yvonne then joined Nation Media Group (NMG) as a Maskani talk show producer at QFM.
“I worked on Rashid Abdalla’s talk show Maskani: a four-hour talk show that discussed political and socio-economic issues. It was citizen-targeted and citizen-driven. While producing this show, I began to shadow the host of NTV’s This Morning for about eight months before I was given the green light to co-hosting the TV show,” she told Citizen Digital.
Yvonne later moved from NTV to QTV where she worked as a producer, news director and sub-editor.
Yearning to push her career forward, ardent Okwara left NMG in December 2012 for Standard Group (SG). She was given a role in front of the camera as host of Sunrise Live, which she also produced.
“In about a year, I was bumped up to the 9pm news slot, and in less than five months, added the biggest show; Sunday’s Checkpoint. About a year later, I kept rising, and we launched Kenya’s first 24-hour news channel KTN News, also one of my proudest moments to date,” she told Citizen Digital.
While at SG, Yvonne grew immensely from a junior news anchor to a senior one. She then rose to the title of Head of News Anchors, Editor in charge of Research and Planning and then Head of News Strategy at KTN News.
Five years later, Okwara made a major shift to RMS Citizen TV as an Editor for Research as well as Senior News Anchor and host of Tonight on Thursdays.
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