Viola Llewellyn 2017 Speaker

Co-Founder & President

Ovamba Solutions, Inc, Sub-Saharan Africa

Biography

Viola Llewellyn is the co-founder and President of Ovamba Solutions, Inc. (www.Ovamba.com). Ovamba is an award winning African “TradeTech” company that creates culturally attuned technologies to serve formal and informal African SMEs in the trade & commodities sectors. Ovamba’s solutions combine innovative Sharia compliant structures with eCommerce, logistics services, and technology to drive financial inclusion and promote growth. Ms. Llewellyn oversees technology development, strategic implementation, investor communications, and global business development for Ovamba. In June of 2018, Ovamba was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Global Technology Pioneer, securing a 2-year Ambassadorship and a place at the prestigious “Davos Summit” conference.

Ms. Llewellyn’s past career includes building a $50MM life insurance investment fund for a Washington, DC based insurance investment firm where she led investor communications, and asset management divisions. She has held positions with companies such as Unisys Corporation, IBM, KPMG Consulting, BearingPoint and Rothschild’s.

Ms. Llewellyn was listed in the “Digital Undivided Report” as one of only 34* Black women in the USA to have raised more than $1 million for a technology company. This same ground-breaking achievement was later featured in the April issue of Vanity Fair Magazine and covered by Margo Lee Shetterly, author of “Hidden Figures” (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/women-of-color-diversifying-entrepreneurship-in-silicon-valley-media-and-beyond) . She is listed on Innovate Finance’s 2016 & 2017 “Women in FinTech Power List”, and on “The Innov8tiv’s Top 50 Visionary Women in Tech To Watch in 2017” list. Ms. Llewellyn is further distinguished by being the first Female African Tech Founder to speak at both “Slush”, Helsinki and “Slush, Tokyo” – yearly events that are billed as the biggest gathering of innovators, funders, startups and entrepreneurs in Europe and Asia respectively. In late 2018, she did a TED Talk as part of the “Reboot” Series with Boston Consulting Group.

She is on a number of advisory boards, including The Africa Professional Services Group (www.africapsg.com), the European Women’s Payment Network (www.ewpn.eu), and the African Women in Fintech & Payments Network (www.Africanwomeninfintechandpayments.com), as well as WEI, the Women’s Economic Imperative Initiative, headed up by Dr. Margo Thomas, the outgoing Co-Chair of the T20 Task Force on Gender Economic Equity for the United Nations. Ms. Llewellyn has previously served on the board of Africa’s leading tech hub and incubator ActivSpaces (www.ActivSpaces.com).

Viola Llewellyn’s family is originally from Cameroon. She was born, raised and educated in the U.K. and lives between the African Continent and the USA.

 

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