Margaret Munene is an entrepreneur, business leader and philanthropist. Margaret is the co-founder of Palmhouse Dairies and a founding trustee of the Palmhouse Foundation. Palmhouse Dairies, a member of the Global Dairy Platform, is a milk processing plant based in Githunguri, Kenya that processes 5000 liters of milk daily. As CEO, Margaret has grown the business from one cow to now having more than 500 smallholder farmers (mostly women) delivering to her business. Margaret is also a founder trustee of the Palmhouse Foundation, a Kenyan education trust that finances the secondary education of needy and deserving students and mentors them through life, to impact positively on society.

Palmhouse Foundation was set up in 2003, to assist the needy families and farmers who were supplying milk to Palmhouse Dairies. The support was initially unstructured and based purely on the desperate cases presented by farmers from the area. The increasing appeals motivated the funder trustees – Margaret and her husband – to formalise this support. Over time, the Foundation has grown steadily with 10 trustees and 15 members of an Oversight and Advisory Board to build a base of efficient and effective operating structures of the Foundation. As of 2019 The Foundation has over 700 beneficiaries in high school all across Kenya, and over 400 have already completed their secondary education. Palmhouse Foundation has received a corporate philanthropy award from the East Africa Philanthropy Network (EAPN) for their work in local corporate philanthropy. In 2011, Margaret received the ‘Moran of the Order of the Burning Spear (MBS)’ award from the President of Kenya for her service to the community.

Margaret holds a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from the University of Nairobi and a Masters in crop protection from Bath University.