The Global Startup Movement - Startup Ecosystem Leaders, Global Entrepreneurship, and Emerging Market Innovation

CK Japheth is building The Innovation Village; Uganda’s launchpad for leading Innovators and entrepreneurs co-creating the future through the smart application of technology to unravel challenges and create unique solutions. He works with mission-oriented entrepreneurs to capture new value from digital—creating products, experiences, and businesses. Formerly he was Head of Talent at Uganda's largest utility, his mandate was to put the best Talent behind the company's Corporate strategy.

Kai Isand is an advisory board member at Garage48 one of the longest running startup organisations in Estonia as well as a Program Lead at Accelerate Estonia, a startup minded agile innovation project initiated by Estonia's Ministry of Economic Affairs and powered by Tehnopol Startup Incubator and Startup Estonia.

Jussi Tapio is the main organizer of Hack the Crisis Finland. He's a super business-minded executive with a lot of international experience. However he is not the traditional salary man but a pain-in-the-ass straight shooter. Extensive 360° corporate background has not made him a cynic but an expert in the harsh realities of change management.

Alexandre (Alex) Lazarow has spent his career working at the intersection of investing, innovation, and economic development in the private, public, and social sectors. He is a venture capitalist with Cathay Innovation, a global firm that invests across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Previously, Alex worked with Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm that has invested over a billion dollars in hundreds of startups around the world. He has served as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company, a financial regulator with the Bank of Canada, and an M&A investment banker with the Royal Bank of Canada.

Alex is an adjunct professor specializing in impact investment and entrepreneurship at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He is a Kauffman Fellow, CFA Charterholder, and a Stephen M. Kellen Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations. He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.Comm from the University of Manitoba.

Preorder his new book: Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs--from Delhi to Detroit--Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley here -> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1633697584/

Chris Maurice is the CEO and co-founder of Yellow Card Financial. Chris started his freelance writing and SEO consulting career in high school, writing for more than 200 publications (including the former EOG.com and MovieTVTechGeeks.com) and optimizing over 140 websites on Google (including Prezi.com). In college, Chris began sourcing shoes and clothing from Pakistan, giving him his first experience with international markets, partnerships, and currency exchange. He then started consulting for others looking for manufacturing connections in the Middle East, helping over 470 companies and brands start their own clothing line. While studying finance at Auburn University, Chris and his co-founder Justin Poiroux started selling Bitcoin for cash with the mission of giving people access to financial resources in a scalable, efficient manner. They made many mistakes and founded Yellow Card on the back of everything they learned.

Andile Masuku is a Zimbabwean broadcaster and entrepreneur based in Johannesburg, South Africa. As the executive producer of African Tech Roundup, much of his time is spent covering Africa’s emerging tech and innovation ecosystem. Andile speaks widely and advises high net worth individuals and leading brands and businesses around the world on media strategy, market-entry plays and investment pipeline development focused on Sub-Saharan Africa. He has a finger on the pulse of the ecosystem’s most pertinent issues and aspirations and has a penchant for extracting and delivering candid insight and analysis.

Thanks to his active media role, Andile enjoys unprecedented live global network access to leading Africa-focused ecosystem players (founders, investors, policy-makers, C-suite executive and innovation hub runners) and he is well-positioned to assist industry stakeholders to gauge the nature and strength of the often indistinct interpersonal and inter-organisational relationships at play within the ecosystem.

He's a sought-after producer, media consultant, speaker, event director and voice-over artist— servicing dozens of Africa’s biggest brands and agencies on a freelance basis every year. I also advise high net worth individuals and leading brands and businesses around the world on media strategy, market-entry plays and investment pipeline development focused on Sub-Saharan Africa.

Andile Masuku is a Zimbabwean broadcaster and entrepreneur based in Johannesburg, South Africa. As the executive producer of African Tech Roundup, much of his time is spent covering Africa’s emerging tech and innovation ecosystem. Andile speaks widely and advises high net worth individuals and leading brands and businesses around the world on media strategy, market-entry plays and investment pipeline development focused on Sub-Saharan Africa. He has a finger on the pulse of the ecosystem’s most pertinent issues and aspirations and has a penchant for extracting and delivering candid insight and analysis.

Thanks to his active media role, Andile enjoys unprecedented live global network access to leading Africa-focused ecosystem players (founders, investors, policy-makers, C-suite executive and innovation hub runners) and he is well-positioned to assist industry stakeholders to gauge the nature and strength of the often indistinct interpersonal and inter-organisational relationships at play within the ecosystem.

He's a sought-after producer, media consultant, speaker, event director and voice-over artist— servicing dozens of Africa’s biggest brands and agencies on a freelance basis every year. I also advise high net worth individuals and leading brands and businesses around the world on media strategy, market-entry plays and investment pipeline development focused on Sub-Saharan Africa.

On this episode we dive into our top 5 episode that we've ever done with leaders in the Asia-Pacific startup ecosystems. Featured guests include William Bao Bean, Sajith Pai, Justin Hall, Rivers Corbett, Alicia Garabedian and Simon Cant.

Samia Melhem is a Lead Policy Officer in the World Bank's Transport and ICT Global Practice. She chairs the Digital Development Community of Practice and leads Global ICT's Transformation practice, as well as its Knowledge, Learning and Solutions functions.

Her current operational responsibilities include lending and technical assistance for the ICT sector. In her 20 years of experience in development at the World Bank Group, Samia has worked on ICT4D in several sectors: telecommunications and broadband policy, ICT for public sector transformation, improving health and education services, and innovation and private sector development. Samia held several positions as regional coordinator in different regions such as Africa, Middle East and North Africa, Senior Operations Officer at InfoDev, and Strategy and Policy Officer in ECA, Africa and IMT.

Eric Olander is the co-founder of the China Africa Project (CAP), an independent, non-partisan media initiative dedicated to exploring every facet of China’s engagement in Africa. Eric is also the co-host of the weekly China in Africa podcast that is now among the top-10% most downloaded shows worldwide. Eric is a fluent Mandarin-speaker and a longtime China-watcher with more than 25 years of journalism experience at many of the world’s leading media companies including CNN, the BBC, and FRANCE24 among others. He received his undergraduate degree in East African History from the University of California at Berkeley and holds a master’s degree in Chinese Public Affairs from the University of Hong Kong.

Odunayo Eweniyi is Cofounder and COO of PiggyVest. She previously cofounded pushcv.com, one of the largest job sites in Africa with the largest database of prescreened candidates. In 2019 she was named one of Forbes Africa 30 under 30 Technology as well as 30 Quartz Africa Innovators 2019. She sits on the advisory board of TrainFuture, an Education Technology company based in Switzerland, as well as the Gender Lens Acceleration Best Practices Initiative, a collaborative effort of Village Capital, US and the International Finance Corporation's Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative. She works to support the inclusion of women in technology by working with hubs and female-focused networks, including For Creative Girls, GreenHouse Labs, She Leads Africa, Itanna. She is also the cofounder of the women’s community, Wine and Whine Nigeria.

Aubrey Hruby is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Africa Center. She is also co-founder of Insider and the Africa Expert Network (AXN), Co-host of the NewThink Podcast and an active investor in African start-ups. In her role at Insider, Hruby works with global entrepreneurs to generate positive public relations and to connect them with investors, while at AXN, she has helped build Africa’s leading information brokerage and expert connection service.

Hruby has consulted extensively in over twenty-five African markets and regularly advises senior policymakers and Fortune 500 companies on doing business in Africa. She is the former managing director of the Whitaker Group, an Africa-focused advisory firm that has helped facilitate well over $2 billion in capital flows to the continent. Prior to that, she was an International Trade Specialist at the Barnett Group LLC, where she worked with corporate clients to resolve trade problems in the Middle East and Africa.

Aubrey sits on the board of Invest Africa USA, the private sector advisory board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the boards of two dynamic Nigerian companies. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is a professor at Georgetown University, and is a Young Leader at the Milken Institute.