Our Team

John Chacha Jr. Co-Founder of Zu- Lais is a member at the Global Institute of Internal Auditors and a CIA Finalist.
Having held key positions at Petrobras Tanzania, a subsidiary of Petrobras Oil & Gas BV in the accounting, finance, internal control & compliance departments, working closely with the senior management, legal counsel, external auditors, regulators & government authorities. He was part of the team that conducted a successful management transition audit for Petrobras Nigeria in 2013.
Since 2012, John has worked on a number of drilling campaigns across the African terrain & abroad -Nigeria, Ghana, Republic of the Congo, Angola, Tanzania & Kenya being his major jurisdictions.
His ideal exposure working on more than 30 exploration and production projects on joint venture operations, gives him a solid understanding of JV/PSA/PSC agreements & stakeholder/government relations in diverse and complex tax regimes.
Together with his Co-Founders & Partners John has established a growing renewable energy portfolio with a special focus in Solar PV installations, geothermal & wind with a common objective; to improve the economies and livelihoods in Africa through provision of food security by use of agritech systems.

Berryl Claire Asiago is the Senior Legal Counsel for ZK Avocat Conseil (Djibouti). She is an energy lawyer, specializing in the emerging energy markets. Her areas of expertise include;

• Energy
• Geothermal
• Oil and gas law contracts
• Renewable energy law
• Public private partnerships law and agreements
• Project financing
• Free Zone law.

In addition, Ms. Asiago is a PhD student at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF), and a doctoral researcher at the Centre of Climate Change, Environmental and Energy.
Prior to joining Cabinet Z-K, she worked several years in India, South Sudan, Kenya, United Kingdom and Finland, thus exposing her to different cultural environments.
Ms. Asiago possess a wealth of good academic background, she has a Master of Law in international and European Energy law LLM (Dip) (Finland), a Master of Laws in International Banking and Insurance law LLM (UK), a (LLB) Bachelor of Legal Law (India), and a (BAL) Bachelor of Academic Law (India).

Janet is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya and a reputable international development
actor with 8 years’ experience specialising in energy, extractives and environmental law. She
undertakes litigation of cases in Kenyan and regional courts, as well as arbitration, Professional mediation and legislative drafting. Additionally, she provides legal counsel and ensures legal compliance of institutions and projects.
She has a rich background in programme management gained from various Non-Governmental Organizations, United Nations agencies and government entities in Kenya and the East African region.
She holds a Masters degree in Energy and Environmental Law from the University of Aberdeen, a postgraduate certificate in International Human Rights Law from the University of Nottingham and a Bachelor’s degree in Law from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa.
She is passionate about promoting sustainability in natural resource projects with a specific emphasis on the environment, health, safety and human rights considerations. She promotes her passion through her research work, contract negotiations and drafting, project and programme advisory services, legislative and literary drafting, among others.

Charlene Ouma is a seasoned accounting and finance professional with 7 years’ combined
experience in the Banking and Energy sectors in Kenya. Her expertise has been carved in positions held previously as the Business Development Manager at EverKleen Energy and Customer Service at Chase Bank. In the Business Development role at EverKleen Energy, she helped secure a US$1.1m convertible grant financing for a 10MW Solar power project in Kenya from a Development Group. She is widely knowledgeable in fiscal terms for power purchasing agreements, oil & gas exploration and production, natural resources revenue management, contract negotiation, donor funded work programs, expenditure monitoring and reporting, and stakeholder engagement as well as conducting training on women economic empowerment and SME management.  
Since joining Zu-Lais in 2017, she has streamlined the accounting and internal control processes leading to full compliance with statutory requirements in the industries we operate thus positively impacting our revenue growth and regulator relationship.
Charlene holds a Masters in Banking and Finance, Moi University, 2015, a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance Option), Kabarak University, 2012 and a Diploma in Leadership and Management, Strathmore University, 2010.

Eirini holds a Bachelor and Master of Engineering (Meng) in Civil Engineering from National Technical University of Athens, Greece (NTUA) in 2015. During her studies, she attended modules and completed projects related to Applied Hydraulics, Hydrology, Urban Hydraulic Design (Water Distribution Systems) and Environmental Engineering. Then she specialised in Water Engineering by pursuing her PhD in Event Management and Response Planning in Smart Water Systems, in University of Exeter, UK. Her project was co-funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the UK water company “United Utilities Group PLC”.
In the context of her PhD project, Eirini proposed a number of novelties, where she is also expected to provide specialised advice on:

• Developing structured yet flexible approaches to support and guide operators in a water utility throughout the entire response process to water network failure events (all the process after event detection and before site implementation).
• Developing methods/tools with which operators are allowed to interact in real-time in order to propose and assess impact/cost of different ‘what-if’ scenarios/responses without being hydraulic experts.
• Conducting impact assessment using realistic impact indicators that cover different aspects of the event (e.g. supply interruption, low pressure, water quality) – which are consistently calculated for every proposed response solution (to facilitate easy comparison between different response solutions).
• Developing optimisation methods/tools to automatically propose intervention solutions that minimise assessed impact for the end-user and cost for the utility.

Eirini’s expertise and interventions are highly valuable particularly in addressing critical long-term challenges (e.g. supply interruption, low pressure, water quality) the water industry is grappling with across the African terrain.
Her areas of expertise include: Water and drought resilience, Decision support systems, Water supply/quality in the Distribution Systems, Control of water quality in natural water sources.

Based in Monrovia Liberia, Foday is a Co-Founder and Director at EcoLife Environmental Initiative. He has 9+ years’ experience and is an expert environmental advisor with a focus on Medium and Large-scale Health, Energy, Mining, Agriculture and Water Projects. Foday provide technical expertise and support on research design, using methodology, and data collection instruments to develop and apply, while monitoring environmental programs and policies.
Mr. Foday has worked on complex projects where his expertise were highly utilized. He has extensive knowledge on current continental and global environmental regulations, which allows him to review company practices and regulations.
Foday was a council member in Liberia assisting in advising various governmental ministries in the health sector and several UN agencies operating in Liberia. He holds a Master of Arts (MA) Environmental Planning and Management from the University of Nairobi in Kenya and a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology (Bsc) University of Liberia, Fendelle.

Bubala is the Deputy Chief Parliamentary Counsel in the Ministry of Justice in the Republic of Zambia.
Bubala is a certified advocate of the High Court of Zambia. She has vast knowledge spanning over 15 years in civil litigation, criminal law, human rights and legislative drafting. She has provided advice to various government ministry departments and has drafted various key documents of legislation, as well as statutory instruments and regulations.
Ms. Chibbonta has certificates for multiple academic degrees relating to her current profession in the following;

• Legislative drafting from the Ghana Bar Association
• Master’s degree in human rights and democratization in Africa (LLM), University of Pretoria, South Africa
• Bachelor of Laws (LLB University of Zambia, Lusaka).
• Practitioners’ qualification examination certificate (LPQEC), Lusaka Zambia.

Khadija is an advocate of the High Court of Tanzania and a Land Tenure Analyst with eight (8) years’ experience in land tenure policies, legal and regulatory reforms; customary land rights; land registration and titling.

• Legal Aid – Women’s land rights.
• Artisanal and small-scale mining rights.
• Human rights, environmental and natural resources related policies and laws.
• Land based investment,climate change, constitutional law, public interest litigation.
• Land-related institutional capacity building and project and program management.

She has vast knowledge and understanding different policies and regulation from; mining, oil & gas to land compensation as well as artisanal and small-scale equitable mining rights.

Khadija has performed a number of interventions, such as drafting and review of the draft land, environment and natural resources chapter of the Tanzania’s 2015 proposed constitution to assessing magnitude of large scale mining projects and it’s impacts to land, environments and artisanal, small-scale miners, communities at large.
Khadija is currently working on informing the public discourse on issues of women, men and youth land rights. Promoting best practices on responsible investment in land.