Founding Advisor

Dianna Yau

Dianna Yau builds products at Facebook to get the next billion people in emerging markets onto the internet. The internet is the ultimate equalizer in getting people access to education, jobs, marketplaces and financial freedom. At her time at Facebook, she’s led teams in building 0 to 1 initiatives, and innovated on new business models in partnerships with some of the largest telcos. Previously, she worked at IBM, Google and Rocket Internet on global strategy, sales, and marketing. Beyond her day job, she helps build startup ecosystems in emerging markets and has traveled to over 40+ countries advising startups.

Founding Advisor

Mark Heynen

Mark has led go to market in emerging markets for large and small companies, from Google’s initial push into maps in the mid 2000s to Facebook’s early mobile efforts and ultimately launching PayJoy, a Silicon Valley-based fintech, in 20 countries.  He currently serves as VP of Business Development at the Stellar Development Foundation.

His focus has been on analyzing  markets, structuring transformational partnerships, hiring highly functional teams in market, and then producing revenue quickly with great unit economics.  He has also raised ~$100M in early stage VC, venture debt, and SPV debt financing across four companies he built, and advised companies on fundraising.

Prior to moving to Silicon Valley in 2006, Mark split his time between India and London, founding and running his first startup, Electrobug Technologies.  As this company had clients in 18 countries and 250+ staff in India through a wholly owned subsidiary, Mark learned firsthand of the challenges and opportunities of working in emerging markets, and is currently an advisor for a number of startups.

Mark graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College with a degree in Economics and History.

Founding Advisor

Hayden Simmons

Hayden has been working in emerging market fintech for most of his career. He graduated from Colorado College in 2007, with an Economic Development major and Spanish minor, having written his thesis on the impact of collectivized remittances in rural Mexico. He spent the early part of his career on the non-profit side, connecting venture-backed remittance startups with immigrant communities for product-market fit testing. Hayden later spent 4 years at Juvo, managing strategic partnerships across LatAm, Africa and Southeast Asia. He then helped Migo expand from Nigeria into Latin America. Currently, Hayden is working on variety of strategy and BD projects supporting Facebook’s global blockchain-powered mobile money project (Libra). He is actively advising a number of early-stage African fintechs, is a fledgling angel investor, and recently joined Lateral Capital as a Venture Partner. In his spare time, he enjoys rock climbing, guitar and tending to his agave farm.

Founding Advisor

Mauricio Cordero

Mauricio is a Mexican entrepreneur currently working on a new start-up in the digital banking space and aiming to empower customers across Mexico through financial and digital inclusion (expected launch Q3 2020). 

Previously, Mauricio was President & General Manager for Latin America at PayJoy, a Silicon Valley fintech startup focused on consumer finance for the underbanked globally. Mauricio joined PayJoy in 2016 to launch and run the Mexican operation, and subsequently launched PayJoy’s SaaS business in LatAm, including Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Guatemala. 

Before joining PayJoy, Mauricio spent several years in New York City working for PIMCO and HSBC, where he was responsible for capital markets and portfolio management advisory for several Latin American government and corporate entities. 

Mauricio holds an MBA from The Wharton School of Business, and an MA in International Studies from the Lauder Institute at University of Pennsylvania.

Founding Advisor

Anita Motwani

Anita  has been advising early stage companies for over 10 years. She has worked with companies in a variety of sectors including fintech, blockchain, e-commerce, prop-tech, clean technology and most recently biotech and healthcare.  Prior to this, she spent 10 years as a Wall Street executive. Anitas expertise is business development, strategic partnerships, growth strategies and capital raising. Anita is a Network Advisor (venture partner) for Correlation Ventures. She has helped both venture and hedge funds with fundraising efforts, as well. 

Anita has a BA from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Columbia University. 

Founding Advisor

Jon Blackwell

Jon has dedicated his life to helping entrepreneurs across the globe. He started out at Silicon Valley Bank working with early-stage technology startups but his passion quickly led him to leave banking behind and move to Kenya where he worked in microfinance. After returning to the US, he co-founded Tala, a mobile credit scoring and lending company. He spent 7 years as Chief Product Officer where he led all product development, strategic partnerships, and expanding the business throughout Eastern Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Following Tala, Jon joined SoLo Funds, a mobile lending exchange providing affordable access to loans under $1,000. He served as Chief Product Officer where he oversaw all product, data, and marketing initiatives. Jon continues his work with entrepreneurs today by mentoring founders through Mucker Capital and Social Venture Partners, a non-profit accelerator. He holds an MPP from the University of Southern California and a B.A. in Economics from Virginia Tech.

Founding Advisor

Jason Robinson

As part of the founding team at Juvo, Jason created and led the product management, design, and marketing teams as VP of Product. Under his direction, Juvo grew from zero to millions of users across 28 countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia with applications for USSD, Android, iOS, progressive web, and SMS. Jason has over 10 years of product management experience across fintech, e-commerce, entertainment, and gaming. Previous to Juvo, Jason was at Flixster/Rotten Tomatoes where he launched and grew Ultraviolet — a cloud-based, DRM standard — from zero to 10 million users within 9 months of its launch. He also launched a digital movie store that achieved an annual sales run-rate of US$1M within its first year. At the social gaming company Playdom, Jason managed a game that grossed US$3M monthly.

Founding Advisor

Charu Jangid

Charu leads product for platform at Niantic, which spun out of Google’s parent company Alphabet in 2015 . Prior to that she was Senior Product Manager at LinkedIn where she led the world’s largest product for professional identity, the LinkedIn profile. Her goal was to help all 3.4B global workers gain a digital identity and connect them to economic opportunity. Charu is the founder of Reputation Conf, has spoken at the World Business Dialogue, Global Entrepreneurship School, OpenAir by Airbnb, Microsoft Ignite, Grace Hopper Conference, and has been featured in CNET, AdWeek, Financial Express and more.

Founding Advisor

Gabriel Manjarrez

Gabriel is co-founder and CEO of Lumbrera Group (Mexico). Lumbrera’s portfolio includes Lumbrera Tech, a bespoke software development firm that helps large enterprises accelerate their innovation needs by helping define and develop a right-sized, right-tech digital solution for their most pressing challenges. Mimoni, another company in the portfolio, was Latin America’s first online consumer credit provider and helps the underbanked solve their immediate liquidity problems while building a formal credit history. Lumbrera also provides customer experience (CX) consulting as well as systems and process development for existing large financial institutions. Gabriel previously was co-founder of Oportun (Nasdaq: OPTN), a US-based credit provider to underbanked immigrants in the US. Since 2005 Oportun has made over 3.7 million affordable small-dollar loans that have saved customers an estimated $1.7 billion in interest and fees compared to alternative lenders. Gabriel was a consultant at McKinsey and later spent 4 years as a Senior VP at Bank of America, acquiring Hispanic consumers in the US. He testified before the US Congress on financial inclusion, successfully helping efforts to allow foreign-issued IDs for domestic bank account opening. Gabe is a mentor for various Mexico and US incubators as well as a formal advisor to several startups. He has an MBA from Stanford and a bachelor’s degree from ITAM (Mexico). He is currently quarantined with his family in Palo Alto, California.

Founding Advisor

Preeti Chadha

Preeti leads core operations for Google Nest where she’s currently working to develop the organization’s long-term customer experience strategy. She is a long time Googler with a focus on building and scaling operations across Google’s technical and sales support centers. She stood up a team of engineers, in India and MTV, focused on apps and tools to bootstrap the usage of Google platforms (Android, Chrome, Google+, Google TV, iGoogle) and team in APAC and EMEA focussed sourcing partner content for several product areas like Geo, Product Search, etc. Prior to Google, Preeti worked as a product manager at a startup building solutions for database integration. She holds a Masters in Computer Engineering from Santa Clara University.

Founding Advisor

Gabriel Gallegos

Gabriel is a sales and business development executive with more than 20 years of experience in managing corporate growth and global expansion in the tech world. A forward-thinking individual able to produce positive results through mutually valuable partnerships, growth opportunity identification, and strategic planning. A hands-on executive known for leading by example and championing the professional and personal growth of employees. Gabriel demonstrated a talent for developing valuable client relationships in the Telco world, building and managing successful sales and BD teams, driving strong market strategy, and directing corporate growth. Regarded as an organized and dependable leader, a collaborative team player, and a creative problem solver. A global traveler with cultural and business experience in Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and North America. With a career focus in Sales and Business Development, Gabriel led Juvo as Chief Commercial Officer from the onset, and prior to that held similar leadership roles for tech startups and matured enterprise

Founding Advisor

Enrique Carral

A native of Mexico who has lived in four countries and speaks four languages, Enrique has strong experience in Ed-tech entrepreneurship, global partnerships, and management consulting. As Founder and CEO of MUKTEK Academy, Enrique set up a platform to train new software developers in Mexico City, as well as to help companies find fresh tech talent. Prior to that, Enrique worked with Samsung Electronics (out of Seoul, South Korea) as a Global Partnership and Business Development Manger, establishing business relationships with Fortune 500 companies in the US and helping develop their LATAM components. Enrique also worked as a consultant for Samsung’s Global Strategy Group out of Seoul and for Kearney (formerly A.T. Kearney), out of New York, where he helped solve go-to-market, strategy, and operational CXO-level problems across several industries.

Founding Advisor

Aneri Pradhan

Aneri is a two time founder working on ecosystem level fintech & energy solutions in Africa. She is the Founder and was Executive Director of ENVenture (acquired by New Energy Nexus), an award-winning incubator that finances and trains distributors to sell clean energy products that has brought clean energy to 87,000 people. She serves on the Board of New Energy Nexus, a leading clean energy nonprofit that has facilitated approximately $1B into the renewables sector. She has over a decade of experience working in 15 countries in Africa and Asia on technology adoption, focusing on clean energy entrepreneurship and fintech. Formerly, she worked at Facebook on their Sustainability and Connectivity Lab, prototyping new social impact technologies. Previously, she served as an Energy Access Officer at the United Nations Foundation, spearheading grassroots entrepreneur mobilization for the Sustainable Development Goals. She is highly skilled at creating and managing strategic partnerships, building teams, communities, and networks, running business development, and go to market.

Founding Advisor

Ali Amin Sattar

Ali has over 20 years of professional experience covering start-ups, global corporates, banking and private equity with over 10 years in MENA and South East Asia, most recently as MD of CareemPay and Head of Strategy for Veon. He has a proven track record of successfully starting up and scaling ventures across geographies, customer segments and product categories. He has deep knowledge of the Fintech / Payments and Telecoms domains He also has extensive experience in M&A, JVs, strategic alliances and partnerships including cross-border and cross-industry deals. He has board level experience working closely with management of high growth ventures focusing on operational development, resourcing, commercial strategy, governance and fund raising

Founding Advisor

Josh Gosliner

Josh is head of marketing at Boku. Prior to Boku, Josh oversaw Juvo’s go-to-market strategy and is a specialist in consumer-facing and B2B mobile technology. Josh has led the development of Juvo’s Financial Identity as a Service (FiDaaS) platform, adding to a track record for delivering strategic, customer-centric technology to the market. Josh has a wealth of experience in product strategy development and marketing. Prior to his work at Juvo, Josh has worked within the technology sector with companies including Accenture, Glidr and Wandera. Josh was an advisor within the University of Cape Town GSB’s startup accelerator (in partnership with MTN) as well as the Raymond Ackerman Academy. He worked with a number of very early stage founders as they sought to develop their go to market (GTM) strategies..

Founding Advisor

Jorge Tapias

Jorge is a go-to-market, partnerships and corporate strategy professional with over 24 years experience. He’s worked at Google, LinkedIn and start ups such as Earnest (Fintech) and Helix (Healthtech). He has deep partnerships experience and has also been a Chief Marketing Officer. He is go-to-market executive who can flex across commercial leadership roles. At Google, he worked on a broad portfolio of partnerships, including product partnerships for Search, YouTube, Maps and Hardware (at Motorola Mobility after Google acquired them). He worked with product teams across Google in order to execute partner programs for their use cases. In his Maps role, he helped acquire content and technology to map over 20 countries. Jorge executed partner strategy and deals with mobile operators around the world (at Google and LinkedIn). He led initiatives to identify M&A candidates for software, wearables, and accessories at Google and LinkedIn. He also has deep content licensing experience (Google Maps, Commerce, YouTube, LinkedIn).

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Matt Kelly

For 15 years, Matt has extensive experience building products focused on emerging markets. Most recently, he founded and built a language learning company that reached students in 217 countries and territories, with the overwhelming majority learning English. Prior to that, he led Facebook’s growth strategy and team where his focus was entirely on emerging markets and building products like Facebook Lite.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Patrick Schultz

Patrick has spent his professional career working for positive impact across emerging markets around the globe. Patrick has years of experience working and living in Sub Saharan Africa. While attending law school he was awarded a prestigious internship that allowed him to travel to South Africa in 2010. There he had the opportunity to work on groundbreaking civil litigation at the highest court in the country. Upon graduation Patrick was hired by the law firm Hausfeld and was deployed to South Africa to spearhead their business development and client recruitment efforts in Sub Saharan Africa. He played a pivotal role in the litigation and settlement of the largest class action lawsuit to date on the African continent, this settlement will benefit hundreds of thousands of individuals across Sub Saharan Africa and is scheduled to pay out over 500 million dollars over a 12 year period. Patrick also serves as the head of partnerships and outreach for Humanity Press, a company that specializes in making communications tools and products for client bases in emerging markets worldwide. Patrick is currently advising several Silicon Valley based companies as they seek to expand their footprint in Sub Saharan Africa. He holds a law degree from American University and has been a member of the California bar since 2012.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Nakul Gupta

Nakul has rich experience in the fintech space for the last 8 years with the large B2C brands in the US such as Venmo, Credit Karma and with financial services practice of BCG. He is currently the head of business operations & product strategy at Venmo, responsible for driving P&L metrics for core P2P business. He works across the org with product, finance, marketing, risk and operations teams to ensure successful adoption, performance and scale of emerging product lines. He also has rich insights into the Banking-as-a-Service space as he manages relationships with key providers around identity, data aggregation etc. for Venmo’s business. Nakul is also successfully running his startup, MyMBACircle.com a marketplace to connect mentors and mentees for job/higher education training.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Abhi Muchhal

Abhi combines expertise in mobile-first consumer products along with experience working with emerging markets and fintech. He is currently a Product Manager at Nubank, LATAM’s #1 fintech unicorn and the largest neobank in the world. There he has worked on the growth team helping Nubank reach 30M customers —  across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia — and is now incubating a new venture within the company. Before that, he was at Facebook where he spent part of his time on civic integrity: building products to ensure the security of political discourse around elections in India, Africa and SE Asia. 

Abhi was born in India, raised in the USA, and now works for a company based in Brazil. He is fluent in Hindi, and can get by in Spanish and Portuguese. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.B.A from the University of Michigan.

In his free time he volunteers with a non-profit teaching kids across the world how to code, and offers career coaching to professionals looking to enter product management. 

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Tim Bailey

Tim has led business development, product development, and marketing for both start ups and Fortune 100 companies.  He started his career at Intel Corporation in Silicon Valley, where he held a number of product and marketing roles largely focused on expanding Intel’s presence into new markets in the Asia Pacific region.  At Intel he spearheaded a number of innovative programs that brought technology to underserved parts of Asia, primarily through partnerships with governments and educational institutions.

Tim has lived in Asia since 2003 and, since leaving Intel in 2010, has led product strategy and business development at Asurion and Speedcast as part of these two companies’ rapid growth phases.  In his last two companies Tim’s focus was on entering new markets, adapting product offerings to match new market requirements, and building in-country teams to support local sales and operations. 

Tim graduated from Williams College with a degree in American Studies.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Jenny Jin

Jenny builds products across Lyft’s consumer rider experiences. Prior to Lyft, Jenny worked for several years in emerging markets entrepreneurship and fintech. She was the first product manager for PayJoy, where she built and launched both SaaS and consumer finance lending products that launched in Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia and India. Prior to that, she led business development at D-Rev bringing hardware medical to commercial markets in India, Indonesia, and Africa. Jenny also worked in philanthropy and impact investing at Rockefeller Foundation and Ashoka East Africa. Jenny holds a MBA from MIT Sloan with a Legatum Mastercard Fellowship in Emerging Markets Entrepreneurship and went to undergrad focusing on Product Design from Stanford.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Lourdes Amayo

Lourdes is a Peruvian entrepreneur passionate about mission-driven FinTech targeting emerging markets and underserved segments. She is currently a Product Manager in LendingClub, and formerly she has worked in EFL Global, PayJoy, and Aura Financial, where she has developed product, growth, and partnerships strategy projects, to help launch and increase the adoption of tech-financial inclusion products across Latin America, Africa, and the underserved customers in the US. Most recently, Lourdes co-founded Bears & Guts, an EdTech startup (pre-seed stage) that is using the power of video games to allow youth in emerging markets learn empowering technological skills such as coding. Lourdes also serves as a Mentor at Acción Emprendedora Peru, a non-profit organization that provides mentoring and business classes to low-income entrepreneurs in Peru. Lourdes is a former business consultant specialized on digital transformation, process optimization, and corporate strategy projects. She has an MBA from Berkeley Haas and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Systems Engineer and Industrial Engineer from UDEP (Peru)

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Nicole Yap

Nicole is an early-stage startup mentor and advisor, with a passion for social enterprise, leadership and people development. Originally from Canada, she spent the last three years in Indonesia as the Managing Director of Digitaraya, an accelerator that connects pre-Series A startups from across APAC with experts and mentors from Google, McKinsey & Company, UBS, Gojek and more. Prior to Digitaraya she worked as a Global Health consultant, advising global foundations and non-profits on their investment strategies to combat communicable diseases in developing markets. She has also advised social enterprises East Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, and is a certified Google for Startups mentor.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Rob Grande

As a product manager currently working at Pngme, Rob builds financial identity and credit scoring products using alternative data for emerging markets. He has 6 years of experience across product management, credit risk, and data science, and 2 years of experience working at FinTechs in emerging markets, including Branch, Juvo, and Pngme. As the credit product manager at Branch, he led the team that developed the machine learning credit scoring models used for all underwriting, and developed new consumer facing credit experiments to improve the user experience and profitability of the Branch portfolio. Before switching to product management, Rob was a Data Scientist and holds a masters from MIT in Aerospace Engineering with a thesis focused on artificial intelligence.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Denise Williams

Denise Ajayi Williams is the CEO/Cofounder of Silicon Valley- Nigerian Economic Development Inc. (SV-NED). SV-NED Inc is an accelerator that bridged the connection between Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. Over the last decade, the SV-NED Inc. empire has acquired 1 billion reach and built strong relationships with 50 thousand business owners and professionals with interest in technology. Williams serves on the board of 5 companies, including SV-NED Inc., Global Connection for Women Foundation, Sky Clinic Connect, Numly, and Collabful. Williams earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of California, Riverside, and her Masters in Business Administration Degree with a concentration in Marketing from Golden Gate University, Ageno School of Business. Williams’ professional career was spent working for premier and leading Healthcare organizations including Kaiser Permanente, Gilead Sciences, Abbott Laboratories, and the State of CA Department of Public Health. Williams is a recipient of several distinguished awards, including a US Congressional Award for Outstanding Contributions from Congresswoman Barbara Lee, a US Senatorial Award from Senator Dianne Feinstein for Outstanding Community Leadership, and Visionary Award from Actor Danny Glover.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Moses Choi

Moses is passionate about finance, technology, digital inclusion, and sustainable development. He is currently a Venture Partner at Clearstone Capital, a collaborative venture fund focused on upward economic mobility. Most recently, he led sustainable and digital finance at Orange, spearheading its corporate impact venturing efforts and playing an integral role in the company’s sustainability €500m bond issuance. Collaborating with Orange’s financial services businesses, Moses invested in and/or partnered with early-stage companies such as Aire, PayJoy, Yoco, and Chain. Prior to joining Orange, Moses spent ten years in capital markets and structured finance at Citi and Morgan Stanley, where he led sustainable finance origination with Fortune 500 companies such as Alphabet, Starbucks, and others. Moses began his financial services career working in microfinance in Kosovo. Moses has served as Board Member of the Microfinance Club of New York and the Executive Committee of the Green/Social/Sustainability Bond Principles. He is a graduate of Cornell and the Fletcher/Tufts.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Roxane Vichot

Roxane is an innovative action-oriented marketing strategist with 9+ years of experience in global marketing, public relations and event management. Her work has mostly been carried out in the ICT industry. She has been able to grow her career in both emerging and mature markets, as well as working on both B2C and B2B levels, from telcos to a government office, to working for a satellite communications provider.

Roxane served as Public Relations Adviser to the Vanuatu Government CIO, within the Prime Minister’s Office, and provided PR expertise on areas such as public relations engagement and launch of new e-digital campaigns (e-health, e-education, etc). She also developed the Pacific ICT Days that eventually became one of the contributors to Vanuatu achieving the UN/ITU Award for ICTs for Sustainable development. Roxane was a Marketing Director at Speedcast and took ownership of the marketing strategy for one of Speedcast’s most diverse verticals; Enterprise; Emerging Markets (EEM).

She has lived, worked and studied in over 8 countries, across all continents. She also co-founded a non-profit organisation fighting hunger in South Africa. Roxane holds two Master’s Degrees; one of which is in Management of New Communication Technologies, from the Paris Dauphine University. She is currently enrolled in the PowerMBA, a disruptive business program.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Jacquie Amacher

Jacquie is a marketing and communications leader with a bias for emerging markets and technologies. Working with new ventures most of her career, she’s executed break-through marketing strategies, communications programs, and launches within Fortune 500 companies and for tech and fintech start-ups. Fueled by crystallizing a brand’s essence to communicate it boldly and distinctively, Jacquie is drawn to inspiring leaders seeking to align business motives with public good. After a fast-paced career in marketing for mobile leaders Motorola and Verizon, advertising agencies, and new technology ventures within the global mobile ecosystem, Jacquie launched F1RST Marketer Group to help early-stage tech companies elevate marketing and communications for traction and industry recognition. Jacquie is a specialist at identifying a distinctive competitive position, architecting a brand rudder to drive acquisition and communications strategies, enabling sales teams, and creating credible industry recognition through media, investor, and analyst relations. She is an active mentor at 1871, Chicago’s Technology & Entrepreneurship Center; seed accelerator, Techstars, and the INCubator entrepreneurship program for high school students.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Olivia Bryanne Zank

Olivia is an experienced founder and venture builder, having built one of the fastest growing fintech companies in Africa, BeneFactors, from Rwanda. She exited her startup, which provides working capital to SMEs using invoice financing (factoring) services, in early 2021 after growing >600% annually and reaching one of the hardest-to-finance client segments in emerging markets; SMEs. Her strengths are go-to-market, product development and regulatory compliance, especially within fintech, ed-tech and trade/logistics. She also sits on several startup boards for edtech and gaming startups, has mentored numerous others and has developed several successful startup growth strategies. She is passionate about using technology for social good, especially where the product and/or technology allows for previously-excluded users to be included. Earlier in her career, Olivia worked as a public sector adviser, incl. as the chief policy adviser to the Rwandan minister of trade and industry, where she led the national strategy development and coordinated Rwanda’s external aid support for private sector development. She has advised the ministries of IT and innovation as well as central banks on how to promote fintech, innovation and tech-entrepreneurship. Olivia has previously lived and worked in Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Madagascar, Nepal, the UK and India. She holds an MSc in Political Economy and a diploma in financial valuation and modelling.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Selman Kaldiroglu

Selman is currently the Head of Product at Pariti, a platform that helps early-stage companies in emerging markets get ready for & find venture capital investments. Prior to his role, he was a data scientist, strategy consultant and a technical program manager at Facebook, Instagram, and Navigant consulting. Reach out to Selman for any help on investment readiness, product strategy & management, data science.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Antony Mirie

Antony works at Facebook where he advises product teams across the Ads, Business Products, and Payments teams. He is passionate about Technology and Emerging Markets and has experienced the revolutionary effect of technology in the developing world – having grown up in his native Kenya and through experiences in building Energy and Analytics start-ups in East Africa and business engagements in Latin America and Asia. 

He has had extensive experiences across various technology spaces including Cloud,  E-commerce, Energy, Fintech, Semiconductors, and SaaS. In addition to his start-up experiences in Kenya, Antony has built out a test engineering team for a semiconductor company, advised fortune 500 companies through two Management consulting stints and been strategist for the Cloud engineering team of a large SaaS company. 

Antony holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and a Bachelor of Science in Economics, Summa Cum Laude, from George Mason University.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

David L. Ross

David has over 20 years private and public sector experience serving multilateral clients including World Bank, African Development Bank, and development agencies from the US, UK, France, Sweden, Germany; financial institution clients including HSBC, AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Credit-Suisse, and Morgan Stanley; and startups, business owners, SMEs, and project developers in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

He has completed successful evaluation, design, and implementation of more $300 million worth of investment funds for multilateral institutions to catalyze growth in SME businesses in renewable energy, water, and agriculture in Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, and across Sub-Saharan Africa.  These catalytic investment funds are projected to increase access to renewable electricity for more than one million people for the first time; provide more reliable access to drinking water for over 800,000 people; and provide access to funding for more than 400 small agricultural businesses. David has successfully raised more than $80 million for nine companies seeking equity, debt, and grant funding in Eastern Africa in agriculture, telecom and renewable energy sectors. 

David has made angel, pre-seed, seed, Series A, and other similar investments into 15 startups operating in South Africa, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and across the continent in cyber security, machine learning, proptech, microfinance, healthtech, insuretech, business services, agriculture, and other sectors with a focus on technology enabled B2B and B2B2C solutions.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Christine Chang

Driven by a continual desire to learn, evolve and build things, Christine moved to Mexico in 2015 convinced that Latin America and emerging markets are the breeding grounds for authentic, impactful innovation that comes out of organic need and an entrepreneurial mindset.

Christine Chang is currently Head of Corporate Development at Cuenca, a neo bank for the underbanked, and Venture Partner at Rally Cap, a global community of fintech angels investing in and alongside an exclusive portfolio of top-tier early stage venture funds in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. She also advises startups on B2B complex sales, fundraising and building high-performing teams.

Christine has extensive work experience in Latin America, the US and Europe. Previously, Christine led Industry & Investor Relations at IGNIA, a cross-border fund focused on solutions for the emerging middle-class in Latin America. Other roles include launching the Startupbootcamp Scale program designed to help pre-series A fintechs and insurtechs in Spanish-speaking Latin America reach exponential, scalable growth and leading transformational projects at American Airlines, UBS, oneworld, Deloitte Mexico and Rappi.

Christine holds an International MBA from IE Business School in Madrid and a Bachelor of Science in International Business from Pepperdine University. She is also the host of Virtual Coffee Talks, highlighting the diverse voices within the dynamic startup ecosystem in Latin America.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Aparna Bhatnagar Saxena

Aparna Bhatnagar Saxena is the CEO of TORAJAMELO an impact business in Indonesia, co-founder of Vriksh Impact Partners that focuses on early-stage investments in plant-based businesses in India, and Indonesia Chapter Head of She Loves Data. Originally from India, she has over 15 years of combined experience as an entrepreneur, corporate professional, and a social entrepreneur and has worked in 4 countries across Asia, where she worked in Global and Regional profiles.. Her areas of interest include supporting businesses that are oriented around women, the environment, and education.
Her areas of experience are Logistics, Transportation, e-Commerce, Ed-tech, and impact/social enterprises.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Brett Cooper

Brett loves all steps of the product journey – but gets particularly excited about going from zero to one.

His career began in traditional financial services in The United States then took a pivot to microfinance in South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa (where he worked with ACCION and the Grameen Foundation). He’s worked with emerging market startups in many areas of fintech (consumer and SME lending, identity management, KYC and onboarding tools, P2P payments, and consumer investments), the mobility space, and FMCG.

Currently, Brett is a Senior Product Manager at Branch International. He is also a Venture Coach at BFA’s Catalyst Fund, a mentor for Village Capital’s Finance Forward program, and an investor at Rally Cap Ventures. Brett has an MBA from Berkeley Haas, is a license CPA, and a Level II CFA (maybe one day he’ll get around to taking Level III). 

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Michele Tucci

Michele is the Chief Product Officer of credolab where he leads strategy, marketing, and product development to deliver unique digital risk management solutions. Prior to credolab, Michele has worked on international product management, business development, and consulting roles with Capital One, MasterCard, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank, and Telecom Italia Mobile. He has conducted business in 51 countries and has in-depth knowledge of cards, payments, wallets, consumer lending, FinTech, and digital products. Michele occasionally speaks on fintech-related topics, particularly on payments, AI/ML, and the intersection of financial services with other industries. On those rare occasions when he is not thinking about financial inclusion, fintech or some other facet of tech, he enjoys long skateboarding, cycling, reading historical fiction books, and cooking.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Oleg Pashinin

Oleg builds enterprise products that unlock new revenue for Google’s biggest bet, Google Cloud. He also researches and enables novel AI applications, specializing in Computer Graphics, through his work with Google Research.In Dublin, Ireland, where he is based, he has created Google ScaleUp program – internal Google incubator that provides advisory to the most promising growth startups. Before that he was also a Google for Startups chapter lead.  
Oleg has been advising early-stage tech startups for the last 7 years, being passionate about emerging markets and Eastern Europe. Companies that he advises come from a diverse set of industries including cloud computing, advertising, mobility, logistics, pharmaceuticals and fashion. Previously, he worked in Engineering, Sales, Marketing and Finance. He holds degrees in Computer Science and Economics.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Anna Raptis

Anna is a passionate impact investor with over 25 years of experience. Her guiding principle is invest in the change you want to see.  Anna’s experience includes investing across sectors and geographies in international equities, funds, energy, real estate, as an angel investor and limited partner in venture capital funds in Mexico and the United States. She was recognized as one of the top female investors by the Latin American Venture Capital Association.

Anna grew up in a family business environment. She has first-hand operational experience and understands many of the challenges that entrepreneurs face. She continues to serve on the board of these family businesses in the seafood and property industries.

Anna is committed to the development of professional women and women investors, to support this goal, she is a cofounder of Women in Venture Capital and Private Equity in Mexico, and Voz Experta Mexico.

She developed an expertise in the energy sector developing energy infrastructure projects with ConocoPhillips, The AES Corporation, OilSearch Ltd, TransAtla, and ATCO. 

Anna holds a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Adelaide and is a Charted Financial Analyst. 

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Raymond Asiimwe

Raymond Asiimwe is a Lawyer. He is founding and Managing Partner of Bytelex Advocates (bytelexhq.com); a leading firm recognized by Legal500 & Iflr – the firm is one of the first law practices in Africa with a dedicated focus on high growth firms(startups).

Raymond’s work spans a company’s entire corporate life cycle including entity selection, employee & founder share plans, ip creation & monetisation, technology licensing & regulation, venture financings, exits and securities transactions.

His work currently involves identifying and implementing interventions for Africa’s tech ecosystem. Recently he developed the series shield financing forms as a model for pre-seed, seed and bridge financings for early-stage companies in Africa. He was also a legal consultant on several business laws in Rwanda and the co-creation of the draft Rwanda startup Act.

While at Bytelex, he has developed growth and regulatory hacks for high growth companies in industries including fintech, drones, creative media & entertainment, renewable energy, agribusiness & precision agriculture and biotech & medical devices.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Shirley Sun

Shirley has 15+ years of product development experience in both hardware and software, including iPod and iPad at Apple, social apps and services at Facebook and streaming platform at Roku.

She is best at leading through constant changes by bringing order into chaos, and solving hard problems of high complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty with can-do attitude and rigor.

She is also passionate about languages and culture and has lived in China, Germany and Australia.

Shirley is a certified executive coach from the Coach Training Institute (CPCC) and holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Ayla Schlosser

Ayla Schlosser is a social impact strategist, leadership coach, and human-centered designer – so naturally she has a deep appreciation for post-its and brainstorming. As the Director of Portfolio Support Strategies at the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, she leads DRK’s capacity building practice and supports portfolio organizations to develop strategies for scale and impact.

Prior to DRK Ayla founded Resonate, a social enterprise that provides leadership and professional development training to women and youth in East Africa. She now serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors at Resonate.

Ayla spent her early career working as a community organizer, and as a strategic communications consultant specialized in stakeholder engagement and facilitation. She holds an MS in Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a BA from Smith College, where she graduated cum laude.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Serghio Munoz

Serghio is a Mexican entrepreneur and executive who is currently Head of Business Development and a member of the US founding team at Cornershop, a fast-growth grocery marketplace acquired by Uber in 2021. 

Previously, Serghio was the Global Head of Business Development at Niagara, a leading beverage CPG in North America, where he successfully launched sales operations across 15 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa. Prior to this, Serghio was Mexico’s launcher and Country Manager, where he built an organization of over 150 members while securing the top market share position within 5 years.

Before joining Niagara, Serghio co-founded and operated multiple hospitality businesses in the US and Mexico.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Yiwen Rong

Yiwen is a Product Manager in Google responsible for building machine learning products that create usefulness to our users.

Prior to his current role, Yiwen was a Technical Product Manager and solution architect for Landing AI, an AI technology company use machine learning to improve productivity for manufacturing and agriculture industry. He led the design of China’s first self-driving and self-harvesting combine harvester that can improve productivity vs human drivers for 5-10%.

Before joining Landing AI, Yiwen was the VP of product management at uSens working on computer vision products serving AR and automotive industry.

Yiwen enjoys working with startup founders on product and engineering innovations and has been investing and advising in several startups in consumer, hardware and SAAS space.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Juan Gabriel Montes Delgado

Juan Gabriel has lived and worked in 10 countries throughout the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia. His strength is  “connecting the dots” between markets, industries, and technologies to create opportunities for the next billion internet users. He is also an early-stage investor and advisor for fintech and consumer companies in Latin America and Africa. 

Previously, he worked as a Consultant at Monitor Deloitte shifting between the firm’s commercial and social impact practice to help organizations access new markets and amplify impact. He’s also served as Deputy Chief-of-Staff to Deloitte’s Chief Inclusion Office, overseeing talent and inclusion programs for +40,000 employees. 

Juan Gabriel is finishing his MBA at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business with a focus on championing investment and talent in emerging markets. He is also a Yenching Scholar with a MA in China Studies from Peking University where he studied business models of Chinese tech startups and their applicability for other regions. He graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College. 

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Derek Schuster

Derek is currently a senior engineer at Ophelia, a growth-stage startup working to expand access to treatment for opioid dependence. Prior to this he was involved in a number of programs at Facebook Connectivity aimed at broadening the availability of Wi-Fi in emerging markets – most recently as the Technical Lead for Facebook Wi-Fi. Before any of that, Derek was an ML researcher in a diverse array of fields, from health informatics to human-computer interaction to NLP in both academic and industry settings.

Derek studied at Northeastern University in Boston and spends most of his free time tending to his plants or brewing cider.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Vijay Sharma

Vijay is an early stage startup advisor, mentor and investor who is experienced working with founders with a focus on scaling operations, senior hire development, recruitment strategy,  commercial strategy and preparation for fund raising. He is presently serving as Portfolio Director of the Annapurna Family Office.

Formerly a Management Consultant and technology executive with over twenty years’ experience within Capital Markets at BNP Paribas, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank, he managed high performance teams and global transformation projects. This has equipped him with skills in leadership development, establishing good governance and coaching.

Since 2019 he has invested in a number of start-ups within the UK, Estonia,India and US in the capacity of Angel investor and is very keen on emerging markets. Vijay understands the issues and challenges founders and entrepreneurs face based on his experience as part of the start up management team at Electrobug Technologies. 

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Faisal Kawar

Faisal Kawar is currently a global early-stage investor with FinTech Collective, a New York-based venture capital firm with 57 portfolio companies. He is passionate about advising and investing in startups. Faisal started his career in private equity, investing in financial services and technology companies across emerging markets. Faisal then joined UK-based payments startup IrisGuard, backed by Goldman Sachs and IFC, to head Corporate Strategy. 

Faisal graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School, founding the HBS Fintech Club, and a Bachelors in Engineering from Yale University. Faisal is a mentor at DIFC Fintech Hive, Yale CITY and Oasis500. 

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Kish Sachdeva

Kish is a leading researcher in the area of Meeting Understanding at Google. His published work and patents push the state-of-the-art by 75% on action item detection. Kish is an expert on NLP, NLU, Speech Understanding, and Speech Recognition. Kish built ML algorithms for music recommendations and discovery at YouTube.

His work on YouTube has been extensively been covered by the New York Times, NPR, Rolling stones magazine, and Billboard. Kish has extensive 10+ years of expreience in product engineering, building Machine Learning algorithms, and advising early-stage companies. Kish’s alma matter includes IIT-Delhi and UC San Diego.

Outside work, Kish enjoys surf breaks in Southern California and track days in Sonoma.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Sebastian Molina Gasman

Sebastian Molina Gasman is an Investment Manager at Seedstars International, an early-stage impact venture capital fund. In this role he focuses on investing and supporting technology entrepreneurs in emerging markets with a particular focus in Latin America.

He holds a Master of Public Administration from Cornell University where he was an Environmental Finance and Impact Investing Fellow and Sustainable Global Enterprise fellow. Previously, he worked in the financial technology industry as an Account Manager at Bloomberg.

He is a CFA Charter holder and holds a Bachelor of Science from Tulane University. Originally from Mexico, he is an avid traveler and has lived in 6 countries throughout his life. 

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Ashish Bhatia

Ashish has made several angel investments in startups since 2014; IntelliVision, acquired by Nortek, Authy, acquired by Twilio, Cirrosecure, acquired by Palo Alto Networks, Minjar, acquired by Nutanix, MakeLeaps acquired by Ricoh, Strikedeck acquired by Medallia, Verbling acquired by Busuu, June Oven acquired by Weber.

He was a judge and a panelist at Venture Summit West 2019, Startup Battle 144, Startup Battle 152, Private Investor Summit 2019, Startup Battle AI 224, Down To Dash, and Pitch Global pitching events. He blogs about security, books, and programming at https://ashishb.net. Ashish holds technical advisory roles at multiple startups– Joveo (in San Francisco), Replai (in Berlin), Wemby (in London), Stylework (in New Delhi), and Elucidate (in Berlin).

Ashish was a founding engineer on Google’s Android app scanning team, known as Google Bouncer, which started in 2010. He was part of Morta Security, a 10-person security startup acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2013. He worked as a Software Engineer focused on Android at WhatsApp, Facebook’s Messenger team, and Instagram Emerging Markets team.

His work experience puts him in a unique understanding of designing and building products for the mobile-first world. Recently, he was working at a cryptocurrency startup focused on building US dollar-pegged stable coin for Latin America and Africa. He owns three patents in the area of mobile security and social media which have been covered by somemajorinternational publications. Some of his security-related blog posts have receivedmajor recognition. His work at WhatsApp was presented at the “Google I/O 2016 conference” and was covered by major publications. He maintains a GitHub repo on Android security which is considered the most comprehensive repository on Android security.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Scott Glasgow

Scott is the founder & CEO of FinMango, an organization on a mission to revolutionize financial literacy and inclusion by making it universally accessible and useful. His story began with a 2014 class discussion at Kent State University. At the time, it was just that. An idea inspired by two professors. Ideas often come and go, but he knew this one was different. He knew it could be something more. Something much bigger.

Seven years later, his humanitarian work has received international recognition in dozens of media articles, including Google.org, CNN, The New York Times, NBC, The Daily Beast, and TIME Magazine. He can also be found on TED.com as a 2x TEDx speaker in countries he doesn’t speak the language in (Portuguese/French) and has spoken to over 100 high schools, universities, and conferences.

Scott is currently working on a new start-up idea in the travel space and is co-authoring a children’s book series about marine life and the effects of pollution. He loves to relax with tennis, yoga, basketball, hiking, and kayaking.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Albert Lie

Albert spent his past five years as the Founding Engineer & Tech Lead @ Xendit (YC S15, Accel, Stripe for Southeast Asia). He saw the company grow from 6 to 400+ people (17+ nations), a couple of weeks before it became the 1st YC unicorn in Southeast Asia.

Before that, he co-founded a civic technology NGO (ala Code for America), partnering with World Bank and US Embassy.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Abhishek Shukla

Abhishek combines expertise in mobile-first consumer products along with experience working with emerging markets and fintech. He is currently heading the product for Embedded finance platform SimpliFi based out of Dubai. Before this he was with GoJek in Singapore/Jakarta building their merchant business, where he introduced easier onboarding and created an ecosystem to grow the merchant base to ~1MM in one year . Before that, he was with Ingenico ePayments based out of Singapore heading their operations across APAC markets.

Prior to this he worked with GRAB leading their financial services offerings for GrabPay based out of Singapore. Prior to this he was UBER leading their Payments & Risk function across APACx markets. His first foray in the fintech world was with PayPal where he led multiple roles, in his last role he was heading risk management function for SEA & India market and was a founding member of Indi domestic launch team. Abhishek also founded an agritech platform to help farmers aggregate their landpools to get better quality and quantity of product per acreage. 

Abhishek was born & raised in India and has lived in 7 countries so far across Asia, Europe and North America. He is fluent in Hindi and English. He holds a B.Tech. in Mechanical engineering and a M.B.A in Product strategy. He donates and participates in activities related to Autism support communities. 

In his free time he likes to travel and meet with people from varied backgrounds. 

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Rich Bowen

Rich Bowen is an Operations leader who has worked at some of the largest and fastest growing technology companies and startups, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Instacart. He now plies his trade at Chime, the financial technology company, founded on the premise that basic banking services should be helpful, easy and free.

Rich is also an early stage startup advisor & mentor, investor, board member, research author and visiting lecturer, with over 15 years of experience across a plethora of industries, including E-commerce, Social Media, Fintech and more.

Rich grew up in London and moved to Silicon Valley 7 years ago but has since relocated to Southern California, like many others! 

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Harnish Singh

Harnish is a Data and Analytics leader with experience across the whole gamut – Machine Learning, Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Data Governance and Tools & Technologies. He combines his technical expertise with business experience having worked with business partners across both, emerging and developed markets, in multiple industries. 

 He currently leads Data and Analytics for Coinme, a Seattle based start-up which is also the largest cryptocurrency cash network in US. Prior to that he worked with TD Bank, one of the largest retail banks in Canada, providing analytics strategy support to multiple product groups. Outside of fin-tech and financial services sector, Harnish has also worked with organizations like Microsoft, Ranbaxy (India’s largest pharma company) and Telus (one of Canada’s largest telecom company) across emerging and developed markets.

 Harnish was born and raised in New Delhi, India and moved to Toronto, Canada 8 years ago. He is a computer science engineer as well as an MBA with majors in finance and analytics. He is fluent in English, Punjabi and Hindi.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Paresh Daya

Paresh has spent his career specializing in financial technology, predominantly working for global, tier-1 investment banks across multiple continents. His extensive background of over 17 years includes expertise in leading and executing within the investment banking domain, together with running global teams across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. His experience and passion has led him into the entrepreneurial and startup space – with specific proficiency in the domains of fintech, digital assets, blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Highly skilled across next-generation and traditional fintech, he is ideally placed to play a pivotal role in evolving the future of finance.

Paresh is currently the Founder & CEO of Dark Wall Ventures, Chief Strategy Officer of Fraxeum and Azuza, and a Consensus member of the South African National Blockchain Alliance (SANBA). In addition, Paresh is also the Co-Founder of Blink and BECSA (Blockchain Entrepreneurs Club of South Africa). He was previously the Chairman of Technology for the South African Financial Blockchain Consortium (SAFBC).

His dedication lies in the areas of the 4th industrial revolution, and focuses on journeying to a new financial world by building and scaling fintech businesses that are based on digital assets and blockchain. He is an international speaker and trusted advisor, driving blockchain initiatives and communities across the African continent and the world. He strives to make a large inclusive, socio-economic and technology impact.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Stephen Rawson

Stephen is an expert in digital and data strategy and implementation. His content expertise spans cloud computing, machine learning, AI and data-driven marketing, as well as digital product strategy and development. He currently supports the MEA region’s largest private and public sector enterprises on top-level strategies and program management in these topics.

In addition to his large-scale consulting work, Stephen has grass-roots experience building small companies. He is a founding member of School of Humanity (an online-first high school) and frequently advises startups on (1) strategic topics like product-market fit and go-to-market, (2) operational topics like performance mgmt., scaling, processes, culture and hiring, and (3) corporate issues like fundraising and M&A. 

Prior to moving to strategy, Stephen held several roles in Finance in Europe across Goldman Sachs, Lazard and PwC. In this time, he supported several high-profile deals such as the $30bn+ sale of chip manufacturer ARM to Softbank and the $25bn merger negotiations between London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse. 

Stephen studied Economics at the University of Cambridge, and also holds a MSc Finance from Bocconi University in Milan.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Tanay Jaipuria

Tanay is a product manager at Instagram where he works on creator monetization. Prior to that, he worked on Ad Products and News feed at Facebook and as a consultant at McKinsey. Outside of work, he writes a weekly newsletter about the business of technology and enjoys playing poker, soccer, strength training and baking.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Bilal Khan

Bilal is an early-stage startup advisor, mentor, and investor with Next Ventures, a Saudi-based venture capital firm. 

Having lived in three countries and speaking three languages, Bilal has a strong understanding of cultural dynamics and their impacts on market entry.He has a proven track record of scaling high-growth ventures and is experienced working with founders with a focus on scaling operations, recruitment strategy, and commercial strategy, across emerging markets.

Whether the strategy calls to “move fast and break things”, or to “measure 100 times at cut once”, Bilal leverages his experience from advising and working with tech startups and Fortune 500 companies.

Companies that he advises come from a diverse set of industries including payments, private equity, logistics, and eCommerce.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Anirudh Singh Shekhawat

Anirudh is an inventor and analytics & data science leader with over 11+ years of experience in global commerce & financial technologies, working in both emerging and developed markets. He has a few patents pending approval in the fintech domain. He has been an advisor and investor for the last 5 years and has advised and invested in retail, travel, technology, and finance. 

He currently heads the analytics and data science team at PayPal focusing on payment processing optimizations. Throughout his career, Anirudh has led Bn+ product initiatives for the companies he has worked for. 

Prior to PayPal, he has led products to drive a better experience for both buyers and sellers at eBay’s European marketplaces. Anirudh’s experience gives him a strategic vantage point which helps him to identify opportunities in any business.

In his free time, he likes to write scripts using the democratized financial data to drive financial wellness for friends & family, go on hikes and mountain bike rides around the hills near his home. 

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Rishabh Gupta

As a product manager currently working at Alerzo, Rishabh builds B2B marketplace and supply chain products for informal retailers in African markets. He has 6+ years of experience across product management and software engineering, and 2+ years of growth and digital marketing working at a consumer electronics startup based in Silicon Valley. As the founding product manager at souKare, he led the team that developed the Middle East’s first full-service digital pharmacy, having integration with leading insurance networks to improve the user experience and profitability of the startup. Before switching to product management, Rishabh was a systems engineer at Infosys and holds a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Justin Ho Guo Shun

Justin Ho Guo Shun is a seasoned and successful results-oriented leader with a track record of producing, managing and directing.

A highly motivated individual with a proven ability to develop people and commercialize all aspects of a business. Proving thought leadership, corporate governance, capable of resolving multiple and complex (marketing, human resource, financial, and operational) issues and motivating staff to peak performance.

In addition to being an active volunteer for human rights & quality government, Justin Ho is also a confident leader who is able to drive vision and purpose, manage complexity, and provide strategic execution during an organization’s most critical moments.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Christopher Hugentobler

Christopher builds and invests in early-stage software. He was 1st employee and product lead at Snapask, a $200M+ college prep education startup. He was product lead at Bowtie, a $200M+ insurance and health startup. His expertise is early-stage product management and growth, with extensive experience leading teams in East and Southeast Asia. 

Christopher is a partner at Inspect Element, a venture builder helping companies build and grow digital products, and a seed fund backing underserved founders. He helps global unicorns with East Asia market entry and product localization. He helps startups with product strategy and staffing. He advises founders on finding product market fit. 

Christopher is most passionate about climate tech, subscription products and social media. He also co-founded 24 Hour Race, a global non-profit that has raised millions of dollars for anti-human trafficking initiatives in Asia.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Sam Sturm

Sam is a co-founder and Chief Venture Architect at Founders Factory Africa where he leads the most active venture studio on the continent. With a focus on turning promising ideas into breakthrough innovations, he manages Founders Factory Africa’s Build Program to develop new businesses from the ground up, supporting entrepreneurs in navigating the earliest stages of the venture lifecycle.

To date Sam has worked with over 100 founders in emerging markets in Africa and Asia to develop and scale new products and business. As a Strategy Lead for Venture Design at the San Francisco-based design firm fuseproject, he worked with a broad range of clients — from large multinational corporates to Silicon Valley startups — and led the design and delivery of the SPRING Accelerator, working with more than 75 businesses across East Africa and South Asia to drive growth at scale alongside the Nike Foundation, USAID and DFID.

A former teacher and aspiring filmmaker, Sam takes a design-led approach to problem solving, creating products, services, and business models that are equal parts scalable and sustainable.With an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BA from Amherst College, he brings both a commercial and creative perspective to the venture creation process, leading to businesses that are increasingly inclusive, imaginative, and impactful.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Kanchana Vivekanandhan

Kanchana is currently in a Data Leadership role at Meta. She has worked with Companies from YCombinator and was part of the team that led the acquisition of YouCaring to GoFundMe. Passionate about Product Development, Engineering, Data and GTM. Domain expertise in FinTech, Social and Marketplaces. Currently doubling down on Web3 space and have built an NFT 1K genesis collection. Kanchana has the technical chops and the business acumen with data prowess up her sleeve to help companies small and big to drive business decisions.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Pedro Lopez Sela

For 25+ years, Pedro has been committed to helping individuals and organisations thrive. He is known for his ability to simplify complexity, identify inefficiencies, connect dots and imagine ideas that drive meaningful outcomes.

Pedro is an internationally recognised thought leader, seasoned entrepreneur, battle-tested coach, and sought-after keynote speaker on business strategy, growth, technology and innovation.

An accomplished author, Pedro has written books on business strategy, growth, technology, sustainability and innovation. And has coached and trained over 5,000+ leaders in America, Asia and Europe.

He is also faculty and consultant with EGADE Business School and Interamerican Development Bank, and international lecturer for MIT and Universidad Católica de Chile.

Pedro is an international speaker and has shared stage with thought leaders like Peter Diamandis, Steve Blank, Bob Dorf, Alexander Osterwalder, Jeff Hoffman, Salim Ismail and Yves Pigneur, just to name a few.

He has received international awards and has been recognised as an innovative impact entrepreneur and active citizen by organisations such as British Council, OpenExO, Mexican Association for the Protection of IP and Mexican Association of Biotechnology and Bioengineering, among others.

With a mother from Mexico, a father from Spain and ancestors from Middle East, Northern Countries and Middle Asia, Pedro brings a holistic, diverse, and global perspective to everything he does. His work has brought him to America, Asia and Europe. He speaks two languages and has lived or spent significant periods of time in Canada, USA, Spain, UK, Chile, Panamá and Perú.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Gagan Maheshwari

Gagan Maheshwari is an accomplished product advisor and thought leader with over 20+ years of global success strategizing the definition, development, and launch of exceptional products. Gagan has a proven track record of drawing on technical leadership in product, architecture, and engineering roles to deliver an inspiring vision, human-centered design & delightful customer experiences across SaaS, B2B and B2C products, Financial Technology (FinTech), Payments, Cloud Technologies, Mobile Wallets, Mobile applications, 2- and 3-sided marketplaces.

Gagan has an exceptional track record of incubating multiple products and taking them from inception to scale generating a total of over $400M revenue, 2M+ Net New Actives (NNA) & multi-million dollars in OPEX savings.

Gagan is a creative problem solver and innovator, adept at analyzing ambiguous and complex situations to develop in-depth understanding and insights. His strong product intuition is honed through extensive experience discovering and fulfilling needs of customers from over 15 countries. Gagan’s broad areas of expertise include growth, strategy, product marketing, Go-to-market strategy, product partnerships, leadership, cross-functional team building, revenue growth and funnel optimization strategies.

In his previous role as Head of Product at PayPal, Gagan built and launched multiple products across the full spectrum of FinTech including checkout, onboarding, card issuance/tokenization, P2P payments, Wallet, Open Banking, ACH, Credit Card Processing, Virtual Credit Cards, Working Capital/Business Loans, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), Core Payments, QR code, Compliance and Risk. Gagan led multiple product partnerships with Fortune 500 corporations, payment networks (Visa and MasterCard) and Acquirers.

Prior to PayPal, Gagan held several engineering leadership roles building and evangelizing products, APIs and innovative product platforms. At Equinix, he hired and led a team of 30 engineers, architected the overall Cloud Exchange product solution from the ground up, and led the product launch concurrently across 21 markets globally. He filed over 20 patent claims for the Cloud Exchange product and earned the Best Data Center Innovation award.

Gagan is a Google Scholar with multiple patents and publications, which have additionally been cited in over 100 patents and recognized by researchers in the field.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Azeez Olawale-Arish Yusuff

Azeez is 2x Founder, a board Advisor, a startup Mentor, sales leader, fundraiser and a coach currently focused on executive coaching and helping entrepreneurs seize their opportunity by advising on GTM partnerships, product, corporate development and fundraising strategies. He has led go to market, partnerships, growth and projects in emerging markets for large and small companies, from startups building incredible products to global brands like Heineken, Coca Cola Hellenic, Schneider Electric, Friesland Campina, British-America Tobacco, Arla Foods, Merck Group, ENSCO PLC (Chevron), BSF, and Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals Limited, among others.

Passionate about social impact and technology-driven start-ups and helping early-stage entrepreneurs, his focus is on markets analysis and execution, structuring strategic partnerships,  building lasting culture, assembling resourceful board advisors, hiring and leading high performance teams, scaling operations and revenue. He is most excited about working on tech-driven projects, rooted in ESG and sustainability and that use AI, data science, blockchain, IoT and other emerging technologies and and focus on how they can be used to solve regional and global challenges, build a more inclusive and sustainable economy that moves people, businesses and the world forward. Equally, he has passion for helping businesses in their capital structuring and growth and connecting entrepreneurs with investors, advisors, mentors and other key players in the startup ecosystem globally. 

He is holding 5 MBA degrees with specializations in Advanced Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Global Business,  E-commerce, Sustainability – Renewable Energy, Managing Healthcare, Food and Agribusiness- and Hyperconnectivity ( Cybersecurity, IoT & Digital Transformation). He is currently advising a number of promising startups from North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Middle East building incredible products on fundraising, GTM, partnership, global strategy and growth, among others. 

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Donna Callejon

Donna has 30+ years of experience in leadership roles in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. During chapter one she held multiple executive positions at Fannie Mae. Chapter two saw her become one of the architects of GlobalGiving, now a $150 million/year self-sustaining social enterprise. Both chapters were marked by the development of new market opportunities and partnerships with leadership companies, from (what is now) Wells Fargo Mortgage to Softbank, Facebook to Zola. Donna actively coached, mentored, and led high-performing individuals and teams. Preparing to hand off CEO responsibilities of GlobalGiving, Donna is now leveraging her experience to help unlock leadership and opportunities in others.

In addition to her considerable paid work experience, Donna has played leadership roles on many nonprofit and hybrid boards, has a B.S. in Managerial Economics from UC Davis, and graduated from Georgetown’s Transformational Leadership Institute with a Certificate in Leadership Coaching.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Ned Tozun

Ned Tozun co-founded d.light, one of the world’s leading social enterprises, in 2007. He served as the company’s President and then as CEO through 2022. d.light has been a pioneer in developing, distributing and financing transformative products to low-income families around the world. In 2020, the company achieved its founding goal to impact the lives of 100 million people living off the grid by replacing kerosene lamps with affordable solar-powered lighting, primarily across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Ned also served as a founding board member of the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association, where he played a key role in establishing the off-grid energy industry in emerging markets.

Ned has been recognized by BusinessWeek, the Social Venture Network, the Asia Society, Real Leaders, Endeavor, Momentum 100, and the World Economic Forum for his exceptional leadership, large-scale impact, and innovative achievements. Ned was named one of the world’s top thirty social entrepreneurs by Forbes and Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Ned has lived in the United States, China and Kenya, and has spent significant time in India, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Nigeria. 

As President and CEO, Ned led the evolution of d.light from a product company to a vertically integrated operation of product development, last-mile distribution and fintech business, with over 1,000 full-time employees and a salesforce of over 5,000 commission-based sales agents. Ned has raised over US$250 million in capital to fund the growth of the business through venture investors, private equity, development finance institutions and commercial banks in the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa. He also actively developed sales offices and distribution networks in more than 60 countries.

Ned continues to serve on the board of d.light. He is on the board of Sanku Project Healthy Children to help them achieve their goal of providing fortified foods to 100 million people through the deployment of an innovative fortification dosifier for village-level mills. 

Prior to d.light, Ned founded multiple start-ups in Silicon Valley. He is particularly passionate about mentoring fellow entrepreneurs and supporting technologies and businesses that provide high-impact solutions to climate change and socioeconomic inequality. In his spare time, Ned enjoys playing the piano and guitar, writing and recording original music, hiking along the beautiful trails of the San Francisco Bay Area, and spending time with his wife and two young sons.

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Yemi Oluseun

Yemi is the CEO/ Founder at ‘The Change Hive’, a business growth agency.

Over the last 14 years, she has helped several FinTech & SaaS companies build, MVPs, automate existing business processes and execute go-to-market projects.

She is listed on the UK Top 100 Computing Weekly Most Influential Women in Technology for 3 consecutive years.

She is passionate about change and people – she is a director of the Founder Institute Impact chapter – where she helps early-stage founders build and market their businesses, She is also a consultant on the Stanford Seed programme where she helps small businesses in emerging markets grow and access funding. 

NEXT BILLION ADVISOR

Nandhini Gopal

Nandhini is an entrepreneur passionate about female health in emerging markets and underserved segments. She has been part of founding teams at startups through multiple stages, from inception and bootstrapping to Series C and beyond, and in markets across South East Asia, India and the Middle East. Most recently, she founded Femcy, a company focused on menstrual wellness in India and Philippines. The company was later acquired by coto, a South Asian web3-based social community platform for people who identify as women. Nandhini has also served as a mentor as part of the Google Sheroes Internet Accelerator, an accelerator program targeted at women entrepreneurs from rural, underprivileged economic backgrounds in India. Nandhini is a former business consultant with a focus on digital transformation, strategic partnerships, GTM strategy and product ideation projects. She has an MBA from Indian School of Business.