Norah Kimathi

Norah Kimathi is a co-founder of ZeroBionic, the Nairobi company building humanoid robots that serve as sign language interpreters in classrooms. A 2026 Informatics and Computer Science graduate of Strathmore University, she has been tinkering since childhood: at 15 she built a mock phone out of Lego bricks, and her parents responded by registering her first company, Clyteds.

ZeroBionic grew out of her STEM mentoring work, where she met deaf students struggling because qualified interpreters were scarce. Beginning in 2021 with a robotic hand made from recycled plastic in a university workshop, the team has developed a semi-autonomous humanoid that converts speech to sign and sign back to speech, so a teacher and a deaf learner can work together without sharing a language. Switching to recycled plastic casings cut costs by more than 60 percent, and the company employs street children to gather plastic waste, diverting over 10,000 kg so far.

Business Daily named her among its Top 40 Under 40 Women in 2026, and she was featured as a changemaker at the 2025 IUCN World Conservation Congress. ZeroBionic has also received the STEM Enabler Award from the Global Learning Council. By the company's own figures it has deployed 78 robotic systems across seven countries and reached about 510,000 beneficiaries, and she is championing an open source African sign language dataset so that other builders can create inclusive tools.