Adenike Sheriff is the principal at Future Africa, a platform that provides capital, coaching and community for mission driven innovators building an African Future of purpose and prosperity within everyones’ reach.
In her current role, she supports innovators to access the resources that they need to scale including global funding.
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J Scott Christianson is an Associate Teaching Professor of management at the Trulaske College of Business, where his interests are focused on the impact of emerging technology on society and geopolitics. Prior to joining the college, he was a business owner with decades of experience in videoconferencing technology, project management, and information technology. He has worked on hundreds of information technology projects and remains actively involved in information technology initiatives and startups.
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Katchie Nzama is an intra-African travel adventurer, a beer afficionado, open water swimmer and scuba diver. She is a passionate about using digital media to advocate for community tourism. An award winning travel blogger and TV Presenter that has traveled 35 African countries solo using public transport.
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Mixo Fortune Ngoveni is the Founder/CEO of Geekulcha, an organisation which connects ICT students to the world of Technology while giving them exposure and a platform to showcase their tech skills while they connect.
He is young tech entrepreneur, mobile ninja, connector, social media geek, amateur chef, member of Tedx Pretoria’s organising team and brand manager for Red Bull Basement South Africa. In 2017 Mixo was selected as one of the Top IT Personality of the Year by the The Institute of IT Professionals South Africa; he is a Mail and Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans for 2015. In 2016 Mixo became one of the Top 100 Superbalist, HTXT Africa’s Top 10 Young South African’s in Tech, Youth Village Top 30 Under 30 Young Inspiring Africans and Ventureburn’s Top 31 entrepreneurs Under 40 making waves in South Africa.
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Corporate lawyer turned entrepreneur & angel investor, Monica Musonda is the founder of Java Foods, a Zambian based food processing & consumer goods manufacture. Java Foods vision is to become a leading branded food company in Southern Africa whose brands are synonymous with high quality, good value and nutrition. She is one of the few Zambian women involved in manufacturing at a scalable level.
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Nozipho is the CEO of The Conversation Strategists a firm dedicated to facilitating consequential conversations on global stages. She describes it as “”helping smart people, have simple conversations, that make the world a better place.””
Her clients are international organisations ( World Bank Group, AU, ILO etc), governments, and multinationals in Africa. Nozipho is also a Human Capital Advocate for The World Bank and Global Citizen in Southern Africa. She is the chairperson designate of the LRMG Group and has served in government (The Presidency, RSA), civil society Umlambo Foundation), and corporate (Tata Africa, CNBC Africa).
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Nyari Samushonga is the CEO of WeThinkCode, a tech academy that operates in Joburg, Durban and Cape Town. As an entrepreneur and tech executive, Nyari is passionate about seeing Africans take their place as makers of cutting edge technology. She has accelerated the recruitment of women students to the point of parity within the academy. In her role as CEO of WeThinkCode_she has driven effective initiative to scale the impact of an organization. These include doubling the recruitment capacity and launching a home grown curriculum that caters to the South African market. She has led the organisation through a period of dynamic growth.
A chartered accountant by training, Nyari has previously operated as the Managing director of ThoughtWorks Africa, a subsidiary of the global software development consultancy, and a Manager in Deloitte’s audit and assurance division operating in both Harare and New York. Born in Zimbabwe, she also lived and worked in the United States and Tanzania. She is based in Johannesburg, South Africa where she follows a strict exercise regime when not reading for her masters in development finance.
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From a nursing background based in Australia (diaspora) to the youngest female commercial farmer in the country and a readily recognized brand “Zed Farmer”, Maria has a story worth knowing. How did she manage to transition from such a completely unrelated field, navigate the terrain of being a sole trader/farmer to running a business that employs over 100 people and generates staggering volumes of produce in the form of tomatoes, onions, groundnuts today?
Ensure you join the event and learn from her exactly what steps she took to convert this idea into reality and how you can too, if you choose to take serious action thereafter.
Durban-born, Ramona Kasavan, is the CEO of a social enterprise Mimi which she proudly founded in 2014. Her goal: to promote girl- child education through the sponsorship of her own brand of sanitary pads.
Ramona holds a triple major in Media, Marketing and Communications, as well as an Honours Degree in Marketing Strategy and a Masters in Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation from Wits Business School. She started her venture after pursuing her Honours Degree in Brand Leadership and Strategic Marketing – writing her dissertation on the constructs of femininity in sanitary pad advertising. She has successfully completed her certification in Social Entrepreneurship at The Gordon Institute of Business Science.
Mimi is not only her passion project, but also her brainchild. A social entrepreneur and media personality, Ramona is a strong-willed and outspoken advocate for women empowerment. She previously worked as a radio DJ on Highveld Stereo, East Coast
Radio, and was a presenter on the popular travel and lifestyle TV magazine, Eastern
Mosaic. She currently works at Heart FM as a weekend radio Deejay on Cape Town’s hottest radio station.
Ramona founded an in-house enterprise development programme named Pads and Cents, which addresses the needs of underprivileged young women in South Africa.
Through a direct selling model, aimed at empowering unemployed females, Pads and Cents teaches young women, between the ages of 18 and 35, to save, secure and invest in their own future. As one of the few business incubators in the country for women, run by women, Pads and Cents gives women financial literacy and business skills – in a bid to decrease unemployment levels, and encourage women to embark on their own entrepreneurial journeys.
On Ramona’s quest to expand Mimi, she has been nominated for multiple awards as well won Prism Awards for Mimi campaigns. She has been able to travel abroad to speak to global organisations such as the UN Women to speak about the plight of women globally regarding sanitary pads and their necessity.
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“At Global Citizen, Chebet Chikumbu is the Regional Director for Southern and East Africa leading an all-women team focused on youth development across Africa to solve this big education and literacy crisis. Chebet joined the team in 2018 for the execution and delivery of Mandela 100 – our inaugural festival on the African continent and is currently responsible for leading the Joburg-based office and setting its organisational strategy, providing oversight of staff and major activities as well as managing key partnerships within the region. Prior to Global Citizen, Chebet co-founded a boutique consultancy to strengthen agricultural value chain financing mechanisms to smallholder farmers and provide capacity building consultation to development organisations.
Chebet has also served at Praekelt Foundation and Mandela Institute of Development Studies where she dedicated her energy towards designing programs underpinned in indigenous knowledge systems, youth advocacy and information dissemination as a basic human right for young people on the African continent while harnessing the power of technology to solve social issues.
Chebet obtained a Master of Commerce in Development Economics at the University of Cape Town. She loves road running, has finished the Cape Town marathon and enjoys watching tennis.”
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