[1] Wanjiru is also the Founder and past Executive Director of Akili Dada,[2] a leadership incubator for African girls and young women and a former Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco.

Kamau-Rutenberg earned a Ph.D in Political Science from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, where she concentrated on International Relations, Gender Studies & African History.

Her essay using a gender lens to explore forced circumcision of men during Kenya's 2007-08 Post Election ethnic violence[3] was one of the first of its kind to use African men's experiences of political violence as a point of departure to theorise the intersection of gender and politics and was published in the Oxford University Transitional Justice Research Working Paper Series.

In March 2014 she was appointed the director of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD)] which is hosted by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.

In 2017 AWARD announced the One Planet Fellowships,[8] a $20M, 5 year initiative to invest in the careers of 600 scientists working towards research to help African smallholder farmers adapt towards a changing climate.