Tokunboh Ishmael 2024 Speaker

Managing Partner

Alitheia Capital

Biography

‘Tokunboh Ishmael is a global voice for creating wealth and impact by unlocking the potential of businesses that provide essential goods and services that address the accessibility, affordability, and inclusion needs of underserved markets to drive shared prosperity.

She has dedicated the past two decades to the relentless pursuit of a vision: investing in businesses that foster equity, fairness, and inclusion to create wealth and transform lives.

Always drawn to uncharted waters, she was an early pioneer of socially responsible and impact investing, especially in Africa, and a visionary who forged a path for investing in fintechs to drive financial inclusion and injecting gender consciousness into the investment process for superior returns.

As co-founder and Managing Director of Alitheia Capital, a female-led private equity firm, she is one of the first in Africa to pioneer impact investing private equity that embodies her philosophy of profit with a purpose. She also co-founded Alitheia IDF where she raised over $100 million to invest in female-led businesses in Africa. Some of the companies she has invested in are already changing and redefining their sector.

‘Tokunboh was a Panelist on the popular Dragons Den Nigeria TV show. She is a mentor to entrepreneurs of small-to mid-sized businesses, helping them grow and scale their companies to reach their full potential. She is a sought-after collaborator and a partner to African and European governments helping them to tackle intractable problems resulting from lack of access to essential products and services.

‘Tokunboh is also a staunch advocate for financial literacy and the creator of Yellow Cowries, a platform that employs gamification to teach kids and entrepreneurs how to achieve financial freedom.

She is a Yale World Fellow and a member of the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute’s Finance Leaders Fellowship.

She sits on several boards from Fintech to fast moving consumer goods companies to the Earthshot Prize, launched by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and David Attenborough to support and scale solutions to some of the world’s greatest environmental problems. On boards, ‘Tokunboh is a driving force for promoting diversity, ethical corporate governance, and building alignment around gender inclusion, responsible investing, economic impact, and social responsibility to make for high performing companies.

As a dynamic and engaging keynote speaker, moderator, panelist, and roundtable expert, ‘Tokunboh shares her over two decades of knowledge to help a broad spectrum of investors discover high impact opportunities.
She is widely sought after to speak on a range of related topics, including Private Equity and Venture Capital in Africa; Technology for inclusive growth and prosperity, ESG and Impacting Investing; Gender Lens investing; Diversity and Inclusion; and Investing to Address specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, reduced inequalities, gender equality, and sustainable cities and communities.

‘Tokunboh recently accepted invitations from the Harvard Business School’s Africa Business Conference as a panelist to discuss private equity and impact investing, The International Woman Leadership Conference to moderate a panel discussion entitled Funding the Dream about female entrepreneurship and scaling their companies, and the Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry (ALFI) to deliver a presentation on Africa’s capital investment landscape and the impact of essential businesses.