Ian Mayo-Smith

Krishna Sondhi

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Krishna Sondhi Mayo-Smith (who uses her maiden name for professional purposes) was born in Mombasa, Kenya, in 1935. Her parents had migrated from India to Kenya where her father, a civil engineer, became a successful contractor and warehouse developer, and her mother undertook much volunteer social work and became the leading woman politician in Mombasa, of which she eventually became an Alderman on the City Council, sometimes acting as Deputy Mayor.

At the age of 13 Krishna was sent to the prestigious private boarding school, Badminton, in England, where she completed her secondary education. (Her family chose Badminton for her since Indira Gandhi had studied there earlier.) She then went on to complete her legal education eventually being called to the English Bar, and later qualified as an attorney in Kenya and Tanganyika. (The courts in Tanganyikja and Zanzibar remained separate even after the two countries were united as Tanzania).

However she found it impossible to join any of the law practices in her home country as they were not at that time prepared to recruit women into the ranks of their profession, so she took a course in secretarial work. Fortunately for her the government, in preparation for Kenya’s independence, decided to open a number of places in the senior segment of the Kenya Civil Service to non-white Kenyans. Krishna was the only woman Kenyan to be selected in this first batch of new entrants, and she became Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government. She spent eleven years in the civil service, eventually attaining the position of Under Secretary, first in the Ministry of Local Government and later in the Office of the President, This was the highest rank that had been attained by any woman in the service.

Krishna was also active in many social and cultural activities. She was a founder member of the Kenya Association of University Women and served a term as its President. She was regular member of the Voice of Kenya TV “Brains Trust,” and an Executive Council Member of the National Council of Women.

While serving as Under Secretary in the Office of the President she was selected as the Secretary of a special committee to review all training activities in Kenya, in both public and private sectors. It was while doing this job that she met her future husband, Ian Mayo-Smith, who was an Advisor to the committee, provided by the Ford Foundation.

In 1973, not long after the work of the committee was completed, Krishna and Ian were married and Krishna went to join him in Connecticut where he was at the time an Associate Professor under the arrangements for exchange scholars. As he was not at that time an American citizen and neither of them held green cards Krishna was not permitted to take paid employment, so she spent the next years as s home-maker.

In 1975 Ian was appointed to a United Nations post in the East African Community in Arusha, Tanzania, so she left with him to return to East Africa once again. Here again she met with difficulties in obtaining employment, despite the fact that she was extremely well qualified for a senior position in the East African Community secretariat. Possibly this was due o the fact that as a former Under Secretary in the Kenya Civil Service she would have had to be given a very senior post in the Community organization, and those in authority did not want to appoint a woman to one of the top posts.. So she busied herself once again in community work, working with her husband in the Arusha Amateur Arts Society which they managed to change from an organization almost exclusively for white residents of Arusha to one that was fully open to Arusha residents of all races and colors.

In 1977 Ian was asked to return to the University of Connecticut as a full professor, so the couple returned to the United States, but this time as immigrants with green cards. (Ian became a US citizen in 1980.) One of Ian’s last actions in Arusha had been to help organize a conference on “Management Training in Africa” and to edit the book resulting from the conference. It had emerged from the conference that there was a serious shortage of books on management and development that were written in the context of developing countries. With no prior experience in the publishing industry, they decided to start a publishing company to remedy this defect. Ian’s job at the University put food on the table and Krishna took on the job of developing and running the new Company, Kumarian Press. (The name was a combination of Krishna’s second name “Kumari” and Ian’s first name.)

Kumarian published its first two books the following year and Krishna continued to run the company as it grew in size and expanded its interests until 2008 when the assets of the company were sold to Stylus Publishing which continues to publish Kumarian Press books following the same lines as Krishna had developed.

During Krishna’s time as President and Publisher of the company it broadened its focus to include international women’s issues, economic issues, management, social, agrarian, health and other issues, but always from an international viewpoint.

Krishna is a Director of Mbaraki Port Warehouses, the company established in Mombasa by her father, and of its subsidiary, Sondhi Trading Limited, which trades in coffee and tea. She pays annual visits to the country of her birth, and also to Thailand where she and Ian have “adopted” and help to support a Thai peasant family. They shared in the family’s joy when a member of the family they had known since her birth became the first member of the family to obtain a full college degree, graduating in July, 2009.

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