Tania Laden

Vice President of External Affairs and Development, Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS)

2018 International Award Winner

Tania Laden is the Vice President of External Affairs and Development for APAICS, the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies. Before joining APAICS, she co-founded and was Executive Director of Solar Sister Kenya (formerly LivelyHoods), a not-for-profit social enterprise that distributes life-changing products in Kenyan slums through a nationwide sales network of unemployed youth and women. Under Laden’s leadership, Solar Sister Kenya distributed over 31,000 clean energy products, such as clean cookstoves and solar lamps, while also training more than 3,500 clean energy entrepreneurs. These products have saved slum households an estimated $16.4 million in reduced fuel costs and saved over half a million trees from being used for fuel. Laden helped found Solar Sister Kenya at the end of 2010, bringing her global business acumen and experience to the organization. Prior to co-founding Solar Sister Kenya, she worked as a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley and as a business and technology analyst at EZLearn, an educational technology startup in Brazil. After serving as an adviser and volunteer for two years with KITO International, a Nairobi-based youth employment non-profit, she moved to Kenya to build and manage the first sales agent network created by Solar Sister Kenya. Laden has been recognized as a 2011 Mara Foundation Entrepreneur Fellow, one of PBS Newshour’s Agents of Change, and a Global Social Benefit Fellowship (GSBI) Fellow. She earned her BS from Stanford University, where she graduated with a degree in Science, Technology and Society with a focus on Management Science and Engineering. In 2022, she earned a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.