Manager of second opportunities for the prison and post-prison population of Colombia. Actress, businesswoman, founder and executive president of the Internal Action Foundation. Appointed by the Ministry of Justice and Law as a Goodwill Ambassador to promote the re-socialization and humanization of the prison system (2014).

In 2000 she began her acting career. After participating in 15 productions and her last leading role in the Tvshow  “Three Miracles”, she retired from acting to dedicate and to work in prisons.

In 2012 she created a theater group at the women’s penitentiary “El Buen Pastor” in Bogotá, where she began her involvement in prisons. To date, she has worked in 31 prisons in Colombia, benefiting more than 30,000 inmates.

• In 2013, she created the Internal Theatre Foundation, now the Internal Action Foundation.
• She has carried out the I, II, III and IV National Prison Theatre Festival, with extra-mural performances for the public.
• Organizer of the first TEDx in a Latin American prison (TEDx “Buen Pastor”:  How to Turn Mistakes into Opportunities).
• Member of the Prison Dignity Committee of the Ministry of Justice and Law (2013).
• Co-founder of Freedom House, a space for post-penitentiary attention in alliance with the Ministry of Justice, INPEC and Colsubsidio.
• Manager and creator of the first restaurant in the world open to the public in a women’s prison, INTERNO.
• She has participated as a speaker at important international events of the IDB, such as the Women’s Forum for Society and Economy in Deauville, France and Sao Paulo (2014), the True North Woman in Guanajuato, Mexico (2015), Tedx Mujeres Bogotá, Demand Solution in Miami., Women Economic Forum Latin America, McKenzie among others.

In 2017, she began her involvement with the juvenile prison sector.

Wawira is the founder of Food for Education an organization that is feeding Africa’s future through innovative, cutting-edge technology. Food for Education has created a sustainable model of efficiently providing locally sourced, high quality, nutritious meals to public primary school children. Their scalable, efficient model is creating the first sustainable path to solve the child nutrition crisis for 500 million African children. She is a Ford Foundation Global Fellow, the youngest recipient of the University of South Australia’s alumni award 2017, a 2018 Rainer Arnhold Fellow, a recipient of the Builders of Africa Award 2018 and one of 2018’s Top 40 under 40 women in Kenya. She is also the first recipient of the Global Citizen Youth Leadership Prize 2018 presented by Cisco.

Stephanie is a member of DRK’s Operating Committee, a leadership team that sets priorities, manages organizational culture and develops strategies for the Foundation and serves as a Managing Director of the Foundation where she plays a lead role in sourcing new investments and working with the leadership of those organizations as an operating partner and board member as they grow to build capacity and to achieve their maximum impact. As a member of the Foundation’s senior leadership team, she also helps to execute the Foundation’s strategy and goals and contributes to its thought leadership and external outreach. Stephanie currently serves on the boards of DRK portfolio organizations GlobalXplorer, Kinvolved, Onward, Propel America, Trey Athletes, and WattTime. She previously served on the boards of DRK grantees Braven, EdBuild, Empower Schools, and Immigrant Justice Corps.

Stephanie was on the founding team of Cambridge Technology Partners (CTP), a visionary startup in the tech space that went public and was one of the first entities to foresee the transformation from mainframe-centric solutions to client-server architecture and packaged solutions. She previously was Co-Founder, CEO, and Director of Surebridge, a web-based software provider that was ultimately sold to Time Warner.

She has served as Acting Executive Director at the Tobin Project, a nonprofit organization that sits at the forefront of major research initiatives that address some of society’s most pressing problems and helps transform public policy debates, inspired by economics Nobel laureate James Tobin. She currently serves on their Board of Directors. Stephanie received a “Top 40 under 40” award from the Boston Business Journal in 1999. She serves on the President’s Council of Cornell Women and is a co-Master of Cabot House at Harvard University. She has consulted with clients ranging from early-stage to established organizations in the nonprofit, technology, and healthcare sectors and serves on several social enterprise boards.

She received her BS in Applied Economics with a concentration in International Relations from Cornell University, an MBA from the Harvard Business School and an MPP from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.