Joy Owango is an experienced award-winning founding director with a demonstrated history of supporting early-career researchers. She is skilled in management, business strategy and research metrics and in matters relating to research capacity, higher education, research analytics, donor and government relations. Owango is experienced in creating and building collaborations using the triple helix in industry, academia and government. She has created such collaborations with the Training Centre in Communication (private/Non-Governmental Organization) and the University of Nairobi (the leading university in East Africa). The objective of the collaboration was to create a support system to help researchers disseminate their research. The programme is celebrating its 14th year anniversary. She sits on the board of AfricArxiv - the free preprint service for African scientists. She is a firm believer in open science being a conduit to democratizing higher education and fulfilling the SDGs.