Profile: Molly Jensen

Molly Jensen is a Ghanaian American born in New York

Molly Jensen is a Ghanaian American born in New York but currently based in Nairobi, Kenya as the Chief Executive Officer of Afripods, a free pan-African podcast hosting platform building the largest library of African audio stories on the planet. She has over ten years of experience in people management, sales, marketing, and technology. She served as an EQ Ambassador for Six Seconds, a global non-profit focused on the awareness of emotional intelligence, and she enjoys travelling. She has spoken at Podcast Movement, Africa Podcast Day, Africa Media Festival, BBC Media Leaders conferences, and Advertising Week Africa as well as most recently featured in Forbes, The Guardian, Reuters, JamLab Africa, Podcast Sessions and Apple Podcasts.

Her favourite hobby after travelling is sleeping. “So I like to sleep a lot, probably more than most executives, but I prioritise sleep. I go into the office probably a little after nine. I take some meetings. We talk to our team. I usually do some sort of interviews. I try to do engagement with the community. I am a very accessible executive and I think that it matters in new media because we’re not just building something in a vacuum or in a tunnel. We’re building something for people who want to use a product,” she said.

She is passionate about her engagement with her community as someone with multiple backgrounds. “So I do a lot of engagement and then I care a lot about mental health… I was born in New York. My mom was born in Ghana. I lived in East Africa for the last four years. And I look to kind of engage with my community. I don’t do it a ton. I’m not a big drinker, but I do work out, I sleep and I try my best to travel and enjoy this continent to the best of my ability,” she added.

What would Molly do with $50,000 of free money? “I’m really happy with podcasting. If I’m being totally honest. I would take that $50,000 and invest it here in the creative economy. I think that, you know, the creative economy in Africa gives people the opportunity to go after their dreams and you can make money off of being yourself. I think that Gen Z is huge. Africa has the largest Gen Z in the world. I think that the voices of Black people matter across this continent, and I feel really, really privileged to be one of many, what I consider audio pioneers building something that is for African people at the core and a lot of creators to take up space and figure out ways to get paid for their creativity.”