One of the great joys of being a part of Ushahidi is the calibre of the people that you work with. We run a small and tight ship, so we have to be very particular about who joins us full time. Thus far we’ve been overly fortunate in the quality of individuals who are here. Today I’m excited to announce the arrival of two individuals who have been a part of the community for a while, and are incredibly good at what they do.

Limo Taboi (aka @Bankelele), is joining the Ushahidi team to help with the increasingly complicated area of finance.

As many of you know, he’s a long-time blogger and his popular Bankelele blog on banking and business in Kenya has been a perennial favorite for many years. Like many other Ushahidi members, Limo was a TED Africa fellow, and he has a strong background in banking and finance. His role will be to help us manage incoming funds, work on processes to make it easier to operate the organization and to help with the Kenya-side payroll management.

Linda Kamau (@LKamau) joined us last month, in time for the Ushahidi Annual Strategy Meeting. She’s a pure coder and has been involved with the extended dev community since the end of last year. Linda caught our eye due to her commitment and energy. She’s already proven to be a road warrior, having hit Burundi, the US and Tanzania in just the first month on the job…

Both Limo and Linda will be joining me in Nairobi, so there are now a few of us working out of the iHub and doing our best to keep this train on the tracks in East Africa. Personally, I’m thrilled to have two people with so much energy and experience to work side-by-side with.