Loyce Mbewa was born and raised in the small village of Rabuor in western Kenya, not far from the shores of Lake Victoria. A top student and athlete, Loyce finished her secondary education with high honors and began working in the capitol of Nairobi. She held positions with a number of multi-national firms before deciding to move with her family to the United States in search of a better life. After her arrival in the U.S. in 1996, Loyce made her way to Seattle where she began working for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2002, Loyce was asked to join a delegation traveling to Africa to coordinate a high-profile visit by President Jimmy Carter and Bill Gates Sr. to several countries including Kenya. During the course of the trip, Loyce was able to return to her home for the first time in several years, only to find a place radically transformed by the arrival of HIV/AIDS. Deeply moved by this experience, Loyce decided that she needed to find a way to help her home village overcome the devastating consequences she had witnessed, and came back to found Rabuor Village Project.

Since founding the Rabuor Village Project, Loyce has been serving as the organization's president and defining the way forward for sustainable community development in her home village of Rabuor. Her vision is to combat HIV/AIDS and the resulting hardships through community-based solutions that are driven by the ingenuity and strength of local people. In addition to volunteering her time to run RVP, Loyce is a mother of two and a recent graduate of the University of Washington where she is planning to pursue a Masters Degree in Public Health. She is a Truman Scholar, member of the University of Washington's Global Health Resource Center, and has spoken at dozens of meetings and events throughout the United States on the effects of HIV/AIDS in African communities and community-based responses to HIV/AIDS.