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[h2]2014 Fellows[/h2]
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[h4 uppercase=”no”]Emma Fofanah[/h4]
Emma is an MBA graduate from The George Washington University School of Business with a concentration in international business and finance. Prior to school, she was a Sustainability Analyst at Calvert Investments, implementing Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) investment risk analysis and advocating for corporate social responsibility (CSR). In sum, her eight-year professional background includes sustainable investing, sustainability risks assessment, research and analytics, project and product management, and client relationship management.
As a native of Sierra Leone, Emma is passionate about contributing to the efforts on sustainable economic growth and poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly with fragile Sates.  In the past two years, Emma has lived and worked in five African countries and accumulated valuable work experiences in private sector development, small-and-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) lending and advisory services, and access to finance. During her MBA program, she interned with the Tony Elumelu Foundation as one of the selected candidates of the African Markets Internship Programme (AMIP). Emma also intern at infoDev, World Bank Group. After graduating with her MBA, she commenced her LDI Africa fellowship at Convergence Partners in Johannesburg, SA. Currently, Emma is serving as a consultant on a market development programme in Sierra Leone.
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[h4 uppercase=”no”]Yana Hongla[/h4]
Yana is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies with a Master of Arts degree in International Economics and Energy Policy. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and Finance from the University of Texas, Richardson. Prior to his graduate school studies, he worked in the financial sector for Bank of America, GE Money, and JP Morgan, in commercial, real estate, and consumer retail banking respectively. After his graduate education, he worked for the US Chamber of Commerce (CIPE) in economic policy consulting for the Africa region.
As a Cameroonian, Yana’s professional interest is on Public-Private Partnership models and how they can be deployed to address many of Africa’s developmental challenges. His core focus is on the potential role that Information and Communication Technologies can assume to maximize the economic potential of traditional sectors such as agriculture, mining, transportation, and tax collection and healthcare services. Yana has lived and worked in multiple countries across Africa and will be a LDI Africa Fellow with Whatana Investments Group in Maputo, Mozambique.
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[h4 uppercase=”no”]John-Ubong Silas[/h4]
John-Ubong Silas has experience within think tanks, Congress, federal agencies, non-profit organizations, and universities. He currently serves as Chief Relationship Officer at JUS Consulting focusing on partnership development, proposal/grant writing, program design/implementation, and strategic communication. Previously, John-Ubong served as Partnership and Relationship Manager at the newly formed University of the District of Columbia Community College. In this role, he was tasked with seeking funds to support the needs of the college and building relationships with key community stakeholders. During his two years, John-Ubong secured over $500,000 in revenue through proposal writings, establishing lucrative external partnerships, and contract negotiations.
John-Ubong holds a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Florida and a M.A. in Public Communication with a Concentration in Strategic Marketing from American University.
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[h4 uppercase=”no”]Khaliah Hall[/h4]
Khaliah Hall graduated from Morgan State University and received an Industrial Engineering Bachelor of Science in 2001. After receiving her degree, she worked as an Industrial Engineer at Northrop Grumman and later become a Cost Estimator with Naval Sea Systems Command in 2002. Concluding her career as an engineer, Khaliah became a property manager. With almost 10 years of real estate experience, Khaliah has completed real estate coursework at Johns Hopkins. Her professional background includes property management, property development, commercial real estate inspections, and real estate sales and leasing.

As a native Washingtonian, Khaliah is a selfless & passionate leader, and a dedicated hard-worker. Currently, Khaliah is co-owner of CityDwellers. She is responsible for daily business operations, prospecting, marketing, recruiting, forecasting, agent coaching, and identifying real estate investment opportunities. She will be traveling to Gambia, Senegal, and Ghana to familiarize herself with the West African real estate market and her focus is to expand her global network of organizations. This would allow CityDwellers and its investors to expand their real estate investments to Africa.
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[h4 uppercase=”no”]Rachael Tachie-Menson[/h4]
Rachael Tachie-Menson has spent the last 5 years at Yahoo, Inc. in the Silicon Valley, California. She has mainly focused on driving cross-functional initiatives that enable innovative capabilities across the enterprise to improve the business. Key spaces Rachael has operated in include software development, data analytics, vendor management, project and program management, and product portfolio management.
Prior to her professional career at Yahoo, Rachael studied Science, Technology and Society with a concentration in Computer Science at Stanford. During her time there, she interned with Amazon.com in Seattle, Washington for two summers.
As a native of Ghana, Rachael is passionate about leveraging her experiences and skills in making meaningful contributions via the technology ecosystem in Sub-Saharan Africa. She is particularly focused on entrepreneurship and small business efforts as a means of poverty alleviation. To that end, over the past year, Rachael joined the core team at Passion Incubator in Lagos, Nigeria in a Business Development capacity, with the hopes of creating high growth and revenue potential business opportunities for youth in West Africa. She has also led efforts to organize and deliver the first Lean Startup Machine workshop in Accra, Ghana, enabling entrepreneurs with concepts and tools to validate business propositions before investing time and funds in them.
In her spare time, Rachael enjoys running; she has ran 2 half marathons to raise money for leukemia and lymphoma research. She also enjoy painting.
Rachael will be joining Jumia in Lagos, Nigeria as part of the LDI Africa Fellowship cohort for 2014.
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