» Team
Founding Partners & Global Advisors
Trustees
Senior Advisors
Harambean Advisors
Team
Founding Partners & Global Advisors
Irene Pritzker
IDP Foundation
Irene Pritzker is founder and President of the IDP Foundation, Inc. in 2008. The IDP Foundation is dedicated to developing and supporting programs that are sustainable and move away from aid dependent models. She believes a combination of smart philanthropy and investment solutions can be galvanized to make that future a reality, as demonstrated by the success of IDP Rising Schools Program in Ghana. In 2017, IDP became a Founding Partner of Harambeans and launched the Harambeans Global Access Program.
Jonathan Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer Generations
Jonathan is a South African businessman and philanthropist. He began his career at NM Rothschild & Sons, before moving to Anglo American and subsequently De Beers, where he held several senior management roles in Southern Africa and London for over two decades. In 2003, he established the Brenthurst Foundation, a Johannesburg-based think-tank which examines ways to drive Africa’s sustainable growth. In 2016 he founded the investment group, Oppenheimer Partners, and in 2019 became a Founding Partner of Harambeans and Co-Chair of the Harambeans Global Advisory Board.
Tae Yoo
Cisco
Tae Yoo is the Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Cisco. Yoo leads Cisco’s social investments and stewards Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability across the business. She directs Cisco’s business, technical and financial assets to accelerate global problem solving to positively impact people, society and the planet. Under her leadership, Corporate Affairs strives to inspire, connect and invest in global problem solvers to nurture innovative solutions and catalyze an entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports progress and inclusive growth. She is a Trustee of the Cisco Foundation, a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Entrepreneurship, and a Founding Partner of Harambeans.
Michael Hastings CBE, Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick
British Parliament
Lord Dr Michael Hastings is Global Head of Citizenship for KPMG International. He has also served as a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Council on Diversity and Talent, the WEF’s Global Agenda Council on the Role of Business and joined the WEF Global Agenda Council on Migration. He was previously a non-executive Director of British Telecom (on the Board for Responsible and Sustainable Business) and was a Global Board member of Millennium Promise. In 2017 he was installed as the second Chancellor of Regent’s University London. Lord Hastings is a mentor to several Harambeans and Co-Chair of the Harambeans Global Advisory Board.
Flaminia Giovanelli
Vatican
Flaminia Giovanelli is the retired Under-Secretary of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and as such was recognized as the highest-ranking laywoman in the Roman Curia. Giovanelli is an expert on economics and political science, with a profound knowledge of ethical, work-related, economic, and financial issues and was able to make decisive contributions to the Holy See’s input on questions of integral development, poverty and social cohesion at international institutions such as the UN, the EU, the Council of Europe and the World Labour Organisation. She is author of several children’s books and co-founder and President of O Viveiro Girl School in Mozambique. Giovanelli has been mentoring and welcoming Harambeans to the Vatican since 2011.
Jeremy Johnson
Andela
Jeremy Johnson is the CEO and co-founder of Andela, a company co-founded with Harambean Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, H’09 on the idea that brilliance is evenly distributed. With that as their backbone, Andela invests in Africa’s most talented software developers to help companies build high-performing engineering teams. Prior to founding Andela, Johnson co-founded 2U, one of the world’s fastest growing education technology startups. 2U went public in 2014 (NASDAQ:TWOU) and continues to transform higher education by delivering the world’s best online degree programs with top tier universities. Johnson is a mentor and investor in several Harambeans.
Trustees
Mary de Wysocki
Cisco
Mary de Wysocki is Senior Director, Corporate Affairs at Cisco where she leads the Global Problem Solving Initiative, committed to positively impacting 1 billion people by 2025. Mary has over a decade of experience leading various corporate social responsibility and education initiatives for Cisco. She is a member of the World Economic Forum and a supporter of numerous Harambean-led ventures in education.
Pardon Makumbe
CRE Venture Capital
Pardon Makumbe is a Founding Partner at CRE Venture Capital. He served as a Principal at EL Rothschild in New York and London and is a graduate of Princeton University and the Wharton School of Business. Pardon is a mentor to Harambeans and, through CRE Venture Capital, has invested in Andela and several other Harambean-led ventures.
Yonas Beshawred H'08
Stackshare
Yonas Beshawred is the founder and CEO of Stackshare, a Silicon Valley startup on a mission to transform the way that all SaaS tools and infrastructure services are bought and sold. He studied Information Systems at University of Maryland, worked at Accenture and joined the inaugural class of Harambeans in 2008. Yonas is a founding member of the Harambe Board of Trustees.
Matthias Reichwald
Matthias Reichwald is a London-based freelance designer. He has worked with Interbrand and Pentagram in London and contributed articles to Design Indaba. Matthias served as Harambe’s Director of Design and is a founding member of the Harambe Board of Trustees.
Robert MacPherson
Reciprocus International Pte Ltd
Robert MacPherson is a Junior Partner at Reciprocus International Pte Ltd and Founder of Strathpoint LLC. He is also a researcher for the Centre for African Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and his work on Asia-Africa affairs has been widely published. Robert is a founding member of the Harambe Board of Trustees.
Okendo Lewis Gayle
Harambeans
Okendo Lewis-Gayle is the author of Harambeans and founder of the Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance. He is the inaugural Schwarzman Founder in Residence at Tsinghua University in China and has served as Africa Advisor to the Vatican, Rhodes Scholars, and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Okendo is a graduate of Harvard University.
Senior Advisors
Kai-Uwe Ricke
Delta Partners
Kai-Uwe Ricke is the Executive Chairman of Delta Partners in Dubai. He served as CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG. Kai’s professional career has been dedicated to the telecoms, media and tech (TMT) industry where he has extensive experience as a senior executive, entrepreneur and private-equity investor. Kai is a mentor and investor in several Harambeans and is a founding member of the Harambe Advisory Board.
Amanda Pullinger
100 Women in Finance
Amanda Pullinger is the Chief Executive Officer of 100 Women in Finance. She leads a small staff team and manages over 450 volunteer practitioners globally, overseeing the operations of the organization, which now has over 15,000 members in 22 locations. Prior to this, in 2006 she set up Pullinger Management to provide strategic management primarily to not for profit organizations. Pullinger is currently Chairman of The HALO Trust and serves on the Oxford University Alumni Board. She is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is a champion of Harambean women in finance.
Alexander Pentland
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Professor Alex Pentland directs the MIT Connection Science and Human Dynamics labs and helped create and direct the MIT Media Lab and the Media Lab Asia in India. He is one of the most-cited computational scientists in the world. He is on the Board of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, co-led the World Economic Forum discussion in Davos that led to the EU privacy regulation GDPR, and was central in forging the transparency and accountability mechanisms in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, co-founder of Harvard-ODI-MIT DataPop Alliance and mentor of several MIT-educated Harambeans.
Jeremiah Gordon
CapitalG
Josephine & Jeremiah Gordon support and host Y Combinator Harambeans in Silicon Valley at their residence in San Matteo. Jeremiah joined Google in 2011 and has been the General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of CapitalG since its creation. Jeremiah is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School.
Alyne Kemunto Cistone
Eaton Peabody
Alyne Kemunto Cistone is a management consultant at the Maine-based law firm, Eaton Peabody. She is a Trustee of the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor and a member of the Law Society of Kenya. Alyne and her family reside on Mount Desert Island, where she regularly welcomes Harambeans working on ventures related to climate change.
Francesco Tronci
Investindustrial
Francesco Tronci is Senior Vice President at Investindustrial, a leading ESG-responsible private equity group based in Switzerland. Tronci is a long-time officer for the NOVA-MBA Association (uniting thousands of Italian MBAs abroad), a volunteer/supporter of Mentors4u (pro-bono mentoring network for university students) and a co-founder of Sardinia in Business and Finance (bringing executives to teach pro-bono to students on the island).Tronci mentors Harambeans and hosts summer seminars for them in Switzerland.
Parminder Vir
Tony Elumelu Foundation
Parminder Vir has enjoyed a distinguished career as an awarding winning film and television producer and private equity investor in film and media. She has served as a Board Director on UK India Business Council, Department for Culture Media and Sports, the UK Film Council and The Indus Entrepreneurs UK. Vir also served as the CEO of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, one of Africa’s leading philanthropic organisation based in Lagos, Nigeria from April 2014 to April 2019. She brought her unique mix of skills, talent, and imagination to design, develop and launch the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme, a 10-year, $100 million commitment to identify, train, mentor, and fund 10,000 entrepreneurs from across the continent. Vir enjoys mentoring Lagos-based Harambeans.
Robin Roberts
Rehearse It!
Robin Roberts is the founder of Rehearse it! and was previously the senior partner for the global executive search firm Egon Zehnder. He commissioned with 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards as a regular officer. Robin is a mentor and investor in several Harambeans and is a founding member of the Harambe Advisory Board.
Oscar Adelman
Sinai Ventures
Oscar Adelman is an Associate at Sinai Ventures where he sourced several investments including Grow Mobility (50x markup), Swiftmile (lead investor), Skyryse, Doorport (lead investor) and Esusu (lead investor). In addition to sourcing and diligence, he supports the fund’s operations including running their quarterly and annual LP reporting process. Prior to joining Sinai Ventures, he was a leading young professional at Young Venture Capitalists Association, an analyst intern at BMWi Ventures and OUrCrowd. Adelman is a graduate of the New York University Stern School of Business and serves on the Budget & Audit Committee of Harambeans.
Ben Beisswenger
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Ben Beisswenger is Senior Technical Program Manager, Business Systems, Infrastructure with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. He previously worked directly with non profits at Salesforce.org for 2.5 years, facilitating 500+ successful implementations. Beisswenger serves as Secretary of the Board and technology architect for Selamta Family Project, an organization that unites orphaned children and marginalized women to create permanent families by providing stable homes, education and developmental resources. He is an engineer by education and by heart. Beisswenger oversees the Connectivity Initiative of Harambeans.
Harambean Advisors
Elizabeth Masiyiwa, H'18
Simba Education
Elizabeth Masiyiwa is a social entrepreneur and advocate for youth-led social change. She is the managing director of Delta and the co-founder of Simba Education, a leading African edutech company in early years education. She is a strategic advisor on talent and long-term investment at Higherlife Foundation, for which she is also a board member. She serves on Harvard University’s Leadership Council on Africa and advises a number of entrepreneurship and philanthropy networks. Masiyiwa also co-manages a social impact investment fund on behalf of the family office. She became a Harambean in 2018.
Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, H'10
Andela, Flutterwave & future.africa
Iyinoluwa Aboyeji is a serial entrepreneur, passionate about partnering with missionary talent and capital to build an African future. He spent the last few years as the CEO of Flutterwave, a business building payments technology and infrastructure to connect Africa to the global economy. During that time, he led the company to become one of the fastest growing payments technology businesses of all-time processing over $2 billion across over 50 million transaction with annual revenues of millions of dollars a year. Prior to Flutterwave, he co-founded Andela, Africa’s largest engineering organization with over 1000 software engineers with investment from Mark Zuckerberg and Google Ventures amongst others. Aboyeji became a Harambean in 2010.
Yasmin Kumi, H'16
Africa Foresight Group
Yasmin Kumi is the Founder of Africa Foresight Group, an African-owned and managed firm that provides locally accessible, world-class insights and advisory services to grow local companies into global champions. Their services include research, strategy development, implementation support and stakeholder engagement. Kumi became a Harambean in 2016.
Melvyn Lubega, H'16
GO1
Melvyn Lubega is the co-founder and director of the GO1 team in South Africa. After honing his skills with the Boston Consulting Group, he joined GO1, an established leader in online learning and education, working alongside some of the largest companies in the world covering a wide range of industries and regions. GO1 empowers organisations to offer world-class training and invest in their most important asset – their people. Lubega became a Harambean in 2016.
Maya Horgan-Famodu, H'17
Ingressive
Maya Horgan-Famodu is a Nigerian-American entrepreneur, founder and partner at Ingressive, a firm that provides market entry, technology research and market operations services for firms and businesses expanding into Africa. She also founded Ingressive Capital, a venture capital fund investing in Africa-based technology companies. Horgan-Famodu became a Harambean in 2017.
Christian Okoye, H'13
Emerson Elemental
Christian Okoye is an Investment Manager at Emerson Collective where he manages late stage VC and growth equity investments in emerging market energy access and sustainable infrastructure. Prior to this he was an Associate with Endeavor Energy / Denham Capital in Ghana, a company that invested in infrastructure development in emerging markets, with a focus on Africa. Okoye became a Harambean in 2013.
TEAM
Lindy Larson
Chief of Staff
Lindy Larson is Chief of Staff for the Harambeans. Prior to joining the Alliance she was the Executive Director of Young Entrepreneurs, Africa, a non-profit organisation which nurtures the talents of young people to help them identify opportunities in their immediate environment and face business challenges in the future. Their training creates an environment for participants to nurture their creative instincts, develop their business acumen and learn by becoming entrepreneurs.
Opheley Salihu
Community Director
Opheley Salihu completed her Masters in International Relations – Human Rights. She was selected to be an Education Pioneer Fellow at the NYC Department of Education and has experience as a program coordinator at the University of Akron and Ashesi University.
Ryan Lee
Venture Partner
Ryan Lee is a graduate of Harvard University with a passion for integrating emerging tech solutions in areas of greatest need. He co-founded two edtech startups involving virtual reality and served as co-director of the Harvard Vatican Leadership Summit.
Daniel Boateng
Admissions & Bretton Woods Manager
Daniel Boateng is an entrepreneur and the Founder of an international education consultancy. He previously worked in admissions and recruitment at Lancaster University Ghana and is an alumnus of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology where he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture.
Mary Eshun
Program Assistant
Based in Accra, Ghana, Mary Eshun has a Bachelors in Business Administration from the Ashesi University, and has interned at Global Media Alliance, Multimedia Group as well as completed the Ashesi University National Service.
Brian Antonio
Program & Administration Assistant
Brian Antonio is the Program & Administrative Assistant at Harambeans. He has a passion for Project Management, Marketing, Investment, Design and Architecture, Law and International Relations. Prior to joining Harambeans he worked as a Communications Officer supporting all departments of the British High Commission and DFID in Accra, Ghana.
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