Sistra contributor
Phoebe Maina
Founder & CEO
Nairobi, Kenya
Phoebe Maina is a Kenyan social impact practitioner and founder of Steri Tours, using tourism to strengthen community livelihoods, preserve cultural knowledge and create greater opportunity for women.
Profile
Her story
After observing that donors traveling to Kenya for development work often went on safaris that had no economic link to the communities they were helping, Phoebe saw a gap. She started Steri Tours as a side hustle in 2017 and committed to it full-time during the pandemic in 2020 to ensure tourism could become a direct tool for community empowerment.
“Travel should create genuine symbiosis between visitors and the communities they encounter. Not charity. Not spectacle. Real partnership.”
Looking ahead
What she’s building toward
Increasing the number of community-owned tourism products that are market-ready and locally managed.
Follow the thread
Meet more of the women behind the work.
Founder
Alexa Pham
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Artist · cultural organizer · founder
Alicia Zamora Noguera
Nicaragua
Chair, ICRT global
Debbie Hindle
United Kingdom
Debbie Hindle has spent more than three decades working across tourism communications and sustainability, helping governments, destinations and the travel industry think more critically about tourism's impact. Today, she chairs ICRT global, a non-profit working to expand the knowledge and practice of Responsible Tourism worldwide.