Background
Jonathan Somen was born on 27 June 1969 to Michael and Vera Somen. His father was an advocate while mother a medical doctor.
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Jonathan Somen
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He attended Banda School in Nairobi for his early education before joining Epsom College in Surrey for his secondary education.
Career
The Somen family emigrated to Kenya in 1923 when Israel Somen relocated from South Africa to work in government. He later enrolled University of Bristol to study Economics and Accounting. Upon completing his studies, Jonathan returned to Kenya and worked as a tour guide for Rhino Safaris and Abercrombie & Kent.
He later joined Kilimanjaro Water Company as its Chief Operations Manager.
In the same year, the brothers co-founded LCR Telecom Group, a company focused on providing cost-effective data and telecommunications solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises in The United Kingdom, France, Spain and Belgium, with David as Chief Executive Officer and Virtual Technology Group a telephone call-back services in Africa and dial-through telephone services in the United Kingdom. In the year 2000, they sold off LCR Telecom Group to Primus Telecommunications Group (now HC2 Holdings Incorporated) for about $105.3 million in stock. In the same year, Commsol was rebranded to AccessKenya Limited.
At this point the company was the leading Corporate Internet service provider in Kenya. In 2007, Jonathan led AccessKenya to list on the Nairobi Securities Exchange after a successful IPO making it the Information and communications technology company in the region.
In 2013, AccessKenya Group was acquired by Dimension Data Holdings and delisted from the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
Jonathan remained the Chief Executive Officer of the Group until mid 2015. Jonathan takes part in the Rhino Charge off-road event and mentions that his best way to relax is by flying.
