Award-winning journalist Julie Gichuru is a role model to many thanks to her killer skills on screen, but that hasn’t always been the case.

Little known to many, Julie Gichuru endured a tough period before landing her big break on television.

Speaking to Rev Kathy Kiuna on her show ‘Woman Without Limits’, Gichuru emotionally narrated her journey leading up to the big screen, and it was littered with pain and hard work. 

While her parents put her through her degree, she had to take herself through her Masters in the UK.

“I decided to work for a year to save up money because I wanted to do my masters. My parents gave me some money but they couldn’t afford to pay for the entire course. I used to work from 7pm to 7am twice a week in a factory packing pancakes while standing the entire time. Just packing, packing, packing,” she revealed.

“You’ve got to sweat. If you don’t, then how do you appreciate what you get thereafter. So yeah, it was a long journey but I got my MBA and came back to Kenya,” she stated.

When she came back to Kenya, her parents had split up and she was forced to live with her grandmother in Dagoretti where they would go hungry, sometimes for days. That dimmed her hopes for getting admitted to the bar and she instead chose to look for a job.

“Because the bar means one year of not getting paid, I said I need a job. I’m just going to go to a TV station and give it a try. I knew I could write and being a lawyer, I was taught how to articulate myself. I told myself I could do it. So I went and did a screen test and they called me and told me to start immediately at KTN,” she disclosed.The rest, as they say, is history.