FR.01 / 03
Writing
Proof of craft
Three short stories across three print anthologies, plus essays and other thought pieces. Plus CyberRwanda — five seasons of an Afrofuturist webcomic, written for YLabs' digital health platform.
Open →Transmitting from Nairobi
Talent is everywhere.
Infrastructure isn't.
I build the second one.
Gary Layn — communications strategist, published short-story writer, and builder based in Nairobi, out of Kigali. Working the line between stories and the systems that carry them.
- 3× published — short story anthologies
- Speaker — Women Deliver · GDHF · Future of Sex Ed
- Featured — CNBC Africa
- HEC Paris MSIE
FR.02 / 03
Work
Proof I build
Communications at YLabs, on CyberRwanda — Rwanda's digital health platform. Audience growth at Showmax East Africa. UNFPA, Girl Effect, HEC Paris. A venture in early development.
Open →FR.03 / 03
Studio
Proof I'm building toward something
Projects in development. A Rwandan woman in Nairobi. A matatu driver documentary. The Kenya nobody photographs. Concepts looking for collaborators.
Open →The venture — early days
Owning the infrastructure layer.
Talent is not the bottleneck in African film and storytelling. Infrastructure is — the rights systems, the distribution rails, the production pipelines that let stories travel and get paid for traveling. That's the gap the venture is built to close.
Building this alongside an MSc in Innovation & Entrepreneurship at HEC Paris, 2026–2028.
See what's in development →In development — Nairobi
Film
Feature films and short films
Documentary
Long and short form
Series
Fictional, factual, reality
The long cut
Kigali to Nairobi,
by way of HEC.
How a communications career, a fiction habit, and a business-school detour turned into a thesis about who gets to own African creative infrastructure.
Read the full story →Call sheet — today
06 Aug 2026
- HEC Paris — MSc Innovation & Entrepreneurship, first term
- Shaping the venture
- Writing CyberRwanda — season 5
- Essay: what Nollywood actually scaled