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

Nizar Zakka is a Lebanese national and US permanent resident who was arrested by Iran in 2015, and was imprisoned until 2019 on charges of espionage for the United States. Zakka worked as an Internet freedom advocate and served as secretary general of the Arab ICT Organization in Washington, D.C..

On September 8, 2018, the person who had invited Nizar to visit Iran, Shahindokht Molaverdi, the top aide for citizenship rights to Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, told the Associated Press that the Iranian government had not approved Nizar's imprisonment, and that "[w]e did all we could to stop this from happening, but we are seeing that we have failed to make a significant impact." She blamed a "complete miscoordination" between Iran's civilian government and its independent judiciary, adding that "actions by one branch can ignore or neutralize efforts by another branch".

Despite the admission Iran was holding him against his will, Zakka remained a hostage in Iran until June 2019. With the sponsorship of his home country's president, General Michel Aoun, Zakka was released from Iran on June 11, 2019, and flew straight to Beirut.

Nathaniel Houghton is the Cofounder & President of the Congo Leadership Initiative where he provides leadership and entrepreneurship training to young people living in the Congo. Through his work he's seen the entrepreneurship ecosystem grow and evolve and believes the market is ready for venture style investing and returns. This is resulting in the Congo Leaders Venture Fund, aiming to invest early stage in top entrepreneurs in the Congo. Nate previously spent time as Director at Next Gen Venture Partners where he founded and led their innovation division providing support to their portfolio companies.

Nicholus Steward is the Cofounder of the eSwatini Bridge Project (SBP). The mission of the SBP is to promote, encourage, and facilitate the education and technology goals of the Kingdom of eSwatini. We aim to do this by providing resource and technology transfers which can be adapted to suit local conditions. SBP aims to promote the addition of up-to-date technology and strengthen science and technology education at all levels and its continual upgrading in line with developments in science and technology. Our hope is that homegrown Swazi talent will meet the ICT needs of eSwatini instead of having to import that skill set. In short, the Swazi Bridge Project’s main objective is to be a resource to the Swazi people for matters of connectivity, technology, and education.

Viola Llewellyn is the co-founder and President of Ovamba Solutions. Ovamba is an award winning African “FinTech” company that creates culturally attuned technologies to serve African SMEs with innovative Sharia compliant finance products, eCommerce, and logistics services to promote growth. Ovamba’s technology gives global accredited and institutional investors the opportunity to invest in the fast-growing African private sector.

Martin Sajon is Co-founder and CEO at Neuralys. He is an entrepreneur and cybersecurity professional with 12+ years of extensive experience across Latin America, the Caribbean, and the US. At Neuralys, Martin oversees the overall management of the company, including strategic product and business development efforts. He also works cross-functionally by analyzing core operational and business functions to help organizations reduce their risk. Before Neuralys, Martin founded a security consulting firm called ISNS focused on delivering cutting-edge penetration testing services across the continent to organizations such as Avery Dennison, Nokia, Glencore, Bunge, Oberthur Technologies, SGS, Coty, between others.

Adil Yalcin is the founder and CEO of Keshif, a software tool at the intersection of analytics, design, and engineering. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Maryland as a member of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. Through his research, he created the basis of Keshif as the next-generation data exploration platform. Adil's academic work in data visualization and analysis has been published and cited in various books, proceedings, and academic journals. At Keshif Adil leads technical, design, analytics, and consulting services alongside his cofounder Behar Xharra. Adil is passionate about providing refined, effective, principled solutions that lower barriers of complex tools and complex processes, i.e. solutions that are “as simple as possible, but not simpler”.

Akin Sawyerr is the co-founder of RocRemit, a blockchain remittance company, a director of Splash Mobile Money, a mobile payments company in Sierra Leone and the Africa Lead for Decred an open-source, Bitcoin fork that places emphasis on development funding, on-chain governance, and consensus mechanisms. Akin is a long time executive and entrepreneur operating in mobile money, remittances, and payments in sub Saharan Africa.

Sadaf (Safi) Lakhani is the Cofounder & CEO of Cognitiks a mission driven social enterprise. That works with organizations in emerging and high-risk markets to optimize social & environmental risk management and maximize social impact. Safi has 18+ years of experience working at the nexus of ESG, development and conflict for private firms and development agencies in countries around the world. Safi is a published thought leader and practitioner on social risk. She contributed to the World Development Report 2014 on Risk and Opportunity and World Bank flagship on Inclusion and Shared Prosperity and writes a regular blog for the Institute for Economics and Peace. She has worked for extractives, technology, coffee and consumer goods companies globally, managing social risk and community outreach as well as for the United Nations, World Bank, United States Institute of Peace and European Commission managing programs and policy on fragile and conflict contexts.