Emma Fofanah

 

Atanga Nchang

Atanga is a native of Cameroon currently living in the United States where he recently graduated from the University Of Phoenix School Of Business with a Masters of Business Administration. He previously earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Banking and Finance from the University of Buea, Cameroon. Prior to graduation. worked in the financial service industry for Standard Chartered Bank Cameroon, Community Credit Company, Ecobank Cameroon S.A, and eProcess International in Accra, Ghana. His experience in the banking sector spans from transaction banking, relationship management, business process analysis and anti-money laundering compliance. Atanga’s professional interest revolve around the facilitation of African exports, access to credit and the development of a credit rating system tailored to African local realities, cryptocurrency and its implications on anti-money laundering, and the vulgarization of mobile banking solutions to enhance commerce and economic development in Africa. His core focus is on the pivotal role that factoring can play to enhance the development of Small and medium size enterprises in Africa. Atanga is fluent in English, French, pidgin and a few indigenous Cameroonian dialects. He is currently a consultant while pursuing his doctor of business administration (DBA) at George Fox University, Oregon.

 

Shaina Silva

Shaina Silva is a social enterprise leader with over 8 years of experience in impact investing, strategic partnerships and enterprise technology. She has dedicated her career towards creating pathways to opportunities in the word’s emerging markets. She currently serves as the Business Development Manager of Emerging Markets at DMS International, a Washington D.C based Management and IT consulting firm that is a leading implementation service provider for several U.S. Government agencies. Shaina co-founded ‘Haiti in Transition (H.i.T)’, a non-profit organization investing and developing the leadership potentials of youth from the underserved communities. Over the years, H.i.T has been able to invest, train and support over 500 Haitian youth. As a young global business leader, Shaina has traveled to over 25 countries, and has worked in 7, including Cameroon, Congo, Morocco, Tunisia, India, Haiti and France. Shaina earned her bachelor’s degree in International Business from Babson College, Massachusetts, and studied Sustainable Development at the Universidad Latino Americana de Ciencia y Tecnologia in Costa Rica. Shaina serves on the Board of the “Caribbean Youth Summits”, the “National Association of Haitian Professionals”, and the “Toussaint Louverture Historical Society”. She’s been awarded the ‘Nan-Langowitz Women Who Make a Difference’, and is a proud recipient of ‘The Shelby Cullom Davis Entrepreneurship Prize’. She is a 2015 LDI Fellow with Generation Enterprises in Lagos, Nigeria.

 

John-Ubong Silas

John-Ubong Silas is a leading human capital expert with specialization in international education and partnership development. He currently serves as the Chief Relationship Officer at JUS Consulting, a consulting company serving educational institutions, government agencies, and nonprofits in the United States and Africa. At JUS Consulting, John-Ubong focuses on partnership development, program design and implementation, and strategic communication.  John-Ubong combines 10 years of experience in the US higher education system and international development. His work experience spans positions in leading American think tanks, United States Congress, U.S. federal government agencies, non-profit organizations, and universities. Most recently, John-Ubong consulted for Olashore International School in Osun State Nigeria, a top Nigerian historical secondary school. He led the implementation of the institution’s global leadership curriculum, trained administrators on leadership development, and designed the school’s social responsibility strategy for Nigerian corporations such as MTN and GT bank.  John-Ubong Silas 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, Washington DC. He splits his time between Lagos and Washington DC.

 

 

Lidia Guirguis

As an ambitious and sharp-minded individual with a global perspective, Lidia has the passion to use her cross-sector experiences to help foster investments that can improve livelihoods in emerging economies. She has had the opportunity over the past six years to build a diverse career. This includes roles in investment management systems, management consulting, financial services and business development in Canada and US, as well as international development in Ghana, West Africa. Lidia uses her experience to intersect her management consulting, finance, international development skills. She is most effective in fast-paced environments and is a problem-solver that can hit the ground running. Lidia holds an MBA, Finance from Saint Mary’s University (Canada), a Bachelor of Commerce in International Management from the University of Ottawa (Canada), and studied abroad at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

 

Rachael Tachie Menson

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, v endor 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

 

 

Khaliah Hall

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.

Maganizo Kruger Nyasulu 

 

Maganizo has more than three years of experience in nonprofit   sector. He is a co-founder of a nonprofit organization Global       Hope Mobilization (GLOHOMO). His organization reaches         more than 1 million Malawians with health, environment and         economic programs. His belief in youth creative ideas in             solving social problems prompted him to develop youth led         programs that are ensuring the organization achieves its goals.   In 2014 he was selected into Global Health Corps (GHC)             fellowship and he worked as a monitoring and evaluation fellow   at Dignitas International where he was monitoring and                 evaluating health system strengthening programs in Malawi for   a year. He is a TEDx Lilongwe fellow having presented at the TEDx Youth event in 2014 on youth social innovation. Before joining GHC, he was director of programs at GLOHOMO, and was responsible for preparing strategic programs, designing budgeting, and raising funds through partnerships and proposal writing. The second half of 2013, he was recommended by the John Hopkins University to work as a research coordinator for a Maternal, Neonatal and Child health project. This project was being implemented in partnership with National Statistics Office. Apart from this he has also worked as a research analyst at the University of Malawi Centre for Social research and as a management trainee with the National Bank of Malawi responsible for risk management and monitoring bank portfolios.