John Gachora (born 1968 in Gatamaiyu, Kiambu County) is a Kenyan electrical engineer–turned–bank executive who serves as Group Managing Director and Group Chief Executive Officer of NCBA Group Plc, one of East Africa’s leading banking conglomerates with operations in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Côte d’Ivoire. He was appointed Group MD & CEO in 2019 following the merger of NIC Group and Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA), having first joined NIC Bank as Group CEO in 2013. Under his leadership, NCBA has grown into a Tier-1 institution with an asset base in the hundreds of billions of shillings and a strong presence in retail, corporate and digital finance, including pioneering partnerships in mobile lending and asset finance. The eighth of thirteen children born to subsistence farmers, Gachora attended Kamahindu Primary School and Alliance High School before going on an exchange programme to Brooks School in Massachusetts, USA. He later joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned both a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and went on to obtain an Executive MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His career in global finance has included senior roles on Wall Street with Credit Suisse, managing-director level leadership in investment banking at Bank of America in Charlotte, and service as CEO of Absa Africa in Johannesburg before returning to Kenya to lead NIC and, later, NCBA.