ASP Series Speakers
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Chid Liberty
- January 15, 2021
- Posted by: Michael Umoh
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Chid Liberty is an award-winning social entrepreneur and impact investor. In 2010 he founded Liberty & Justice, Africa’s first Fair Trade Certified apparel manufacturer. In addition to his work at Liberty & Justice, Chid served as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Liberia’s Monrovia Business Startup Center (BSC). The BSC was founded by Spark, a Dutch NGO, for whom Chid managed the Ignite Fund – an equity investment fund that makes strategic investments in companies with high growth potential in conflict-affected states. He also speaks internationally on social entrepreneurship and impact investing – recently at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and Princeton Universities, as well as the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia and IE in Madrid, Spain. Chid is currently leading L&J through its rapid expansion and rebranding as Made In Africa.
Chid was recognized by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in her 2011 State of the Nation Address for his leadership in shaping trade policy and indigenous Liberian entrepreneurship. He is a recipient of the 2018 Ashoka Fabric of Change Fellowship – a C&A Foundation sponsored grant awarded to social entrepreneurs pursuing systemic change in retail supply chains. He was also named by Quartz (a division of Atlantic Magazine) as one of 30 groundbreaking African Innovators of 2017. He was a 2014 Salzburg Global Fellow, a 2011 SVN Social Innovation Award winner, a 2010 Cordes Fellow, and a Yoxi Portfolio SIR (Social Innovation Rockstar). Chid also works as an advisor and board member to a number of high-impact organizations including B Lab, The Unreasonable Group and Unreasonable Capital, and, most importantly – the Georgie Badiel Foundation, which was founded by his wife, former Miss Africa, model, author, and activist Georgie Badiel-Liberty to bring clean drinking water to communities in her home country of Burkina Faso and her adopted second home of Liberia.
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Mark Lewis
- January 15, 2021
- Posted by: Michael Umoh
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Mark Lewis is the founder and CEO of Bravig a content rights and distribution firm based in the UK with a focus on Africa. Over the last decade the company has sold over 5,000 hours of African specific and International content to include lifestyle, reality and family entertainment. Bravig has distributed local language and dubbed programming to SABC, Canal+, Azam and over 30 ancillary Pan-African broadcasters.
The group has a commitment to sport; both local and international programming and plans to deliver live mobile and OTT offerings across 2021 into 15 Sub-Saharan countries. Bravig consults in raising capital for media rights deals and streaming platforms, and sees the future expansion on the continent as pivotal in the global content race. We are committed to empowering local broadcasters and content owners internationally, through effective distribution.
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Amani Kiflemariam
- January 15, 2021
- Posted by: Michael Umoh
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Bronwyn Katz
- January 15, 2021
- Posted by: Michael Umoh
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Bronwyn Katz is an award winning multi-disciplinary South African artist. Incorporating sculpture, installation, video and performance, Bronwyn’s practice engages with concepts of mapping, memory and language relative to land and culture. Conceptually, her works refer to the political context of their making, embodying subtle acts of resistance that draw attention to the social constructions and boundaries that continue to define those spaces. Bronwyn is also a founding member of iQhiya, an art collective and network of black women artists and cultural workers in South Africa formed in June 2015 in Cape Town.
Bronwyn completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2015, receiving the Simon Gerson Prize at the University of Cape Town for a distinctive body of work related to collective history and memory linked to the spaces and objects around them. Bronwyn has held a number of solo exhibitions and participated in several group exhibitions including:
The 12th Dak’Art Biennale in Senegal (2016)
Le jour qui vient – Galerie des Galeries in Paris (2017)
Tell Freedom – Kunsthal KAdE in Amersvoort (2018)
Sculpture – Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean, Port Louis in Mauritius (2018)
A Silent Line, Lives Here at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2018)
Salvaged Letter at Peres Projects in Berlin (2019)
Blank Projects in Cape Town (2019)
Là où les eaux se mêlent (Where the water mingles) (Biennale de Lyon, Lyon, 2019)
The Empathy Lab (Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, 2019)
Material Insanity – Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden in Marrakech (2019)
Road to the Unconscious – Peres Projects in Berlin (2019) -
Nky Iweka
- January 15, 2021
- Posted by: Michael Umoh
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Nky Iweka a.k.a. ‘The Executive Mama Put’ has spent almost a decade redefining Nigerian food and challenging the way in which Nigerian food is cooked and presented.
She opened her first restaurant, Pitanga, two years ago. Situated in West Kensington in London, U.K., it bills itself as offering “Nigerian Food With a Twist”. Serving traditional fare such as Egusi and Okro as well as inventions of hers using Nigerian ingredients in new ways such as her signature Jollof Balls and Prawn Akara. Pitanga boasts an eclectic client base and is fast becoming a destination restaurant for Nigerians and non-Nigerians alike.
“One of my biggest joys is looking around the restaurant and seeing people of various ethnicities eating Nigerian food. I show them how to eat with their hands. It’s part of the Pitanga Experience. Our open-plan kitchen means we can quickly respond to customer needs. My teenage dream is eventually coming true! The next step is to spread the Pitanga Experience.”
A mother of two, she started off her professional career as a management consultant at Unisys and PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she was lucky enough to eat her way round the world (in addition to working in Finance Transformation for Blue-chip Companies, mostly in the Telecoms Sector).
“Worldwide, chefs are constantly reinventing their national dishes and creating truly beautiful masterpieces, worthy of any artist. I wanted the same for our food”.
Her first book, ‘Quintessentially Efik Recipes’ which showcases the dishes and culture of the Efik people of Southern Nigeria was published in 2014. Other books on Nigerian cuisine and her culinary adventures are in the pipeline.
Key Media & Appearances
● ‘Where’s My African Takeaway?’ BBC Food Chain (Nov 2017)
● Guest Chef, Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival, UAE (Apr 2016)
● Annual Igbo Conference: Panel Speaker (Ap 2014 & Featured Speaker Apr 2016)
● ‘Nigerian Food Pops up in London’, BBC (Dec 2015)
● CRBC, Nigeria (Sept 2015) -
Uzodinma Iweala
- January 15, 2021
- Posted by: Michael Umoh
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Uzodinma Iweala is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and medical doctor. He is the CEO of The Africa Center in New York, promoting a new narrative about Africa and its diaspora through a focus on culture, policy and business. Uzodinma is the Co-Founder of Ventures Africa Magazine, a publication that covers business, policy, culture and innovation spaces in Africa. He is a member of the Presidents Youth Advisory Group (PYAG) for Jobs for Youth Africa (JfYA) at the African Development Bank (AfDB). He is also on the Board of the NewNow, a subsidiary of the Virgin Group’s charitable arm, Virgin Unite. He has written three books: Beasts of No Nation (2005), a novel also adapted into a major motion picture; Our Kind of People (2012), a non-fiction account of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria; and Speak No Evil (2018), a novel about Washington,
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Stephen Hendel
- January 15, 2021
- Posted by: Michael Umoh
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Stephen Hendel graduated with a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law. He was a partner at Goldman Sachs, and went on to co-found Hartree Partners, LP, a global merchant commodities firm specializing in energy and associated industries.
Growing up, Stephen Hendel would spend his spare time in record stores to see what looked interesting. Decades later, having become a prominent commodities trader in New York, Hendel was scrolling through music on Amazon.com when he came across an unfamiliar name: Fela Kuti, the pioneer of Afrobeats and regarded as Africa’s most “challenging and charismatic music performers”. Hendel’s love for transporting music took form with Fela, whose dramatic life as an African nationalist embedded in the lyrics of his pulsing songs was so inspiring to Hendel that he said to his wife, Ruth, a theater producer, that they should find a way to bring his music to a wide audience.
That endeavor led Hendel and his wife to producing “Fela!,” the Broadway show that tied for 11 Tony nominations – the most Tony Award nominations in 2010, including the leading contender for best musical.
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Misan Harriman
- January 15, 2021
- Posted by: Michael Umoh
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Photographer & Filmmaker
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Ava Hall
- January 15, 2021
- Posted by: Michael Umoh
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The Empress of Global Entertainment & Culture
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Akinwale Goodluck
- January 15, 2021
- Posted by: Michael Umoh
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Akinwale Goodluck is the Head of the GSMA in Sub-Saharan Africa and has primary responsibility for the attainment of the GSMA’s objective in Africa of connecting everyone and everything to a better future. He leads GSMA’s objective to serve as a guiding beacon for the mobile industry in Africa, focusing on collaboration between mobile operators, governments and other ecosystem players to overcome the physical, social and economic barriers to GSMA’s vision for a better future. Akinwale joined the GSMA in February 2017.
Akinwale Goodluck is a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and has had a career spanning Investment Banking, Legal Practice and in the last 15 years been engaged in the ICT & mobile communications sector working for MTN Nigeria Communications Limited for 14 years, 7 of which was at Executive level with primary responsibility for the management of the Regulatory, Commercial Legal, Reputation, Corporate Governance and Stakeholder management risks for MTN Nigeria. Akinwale provided leadership for the Regulatory objectives of the MTN Group Limited and all its 23 Operations spread across Africa and the Middle East. He was appointed by the GSMA to Chair the GSMA Chief Policy & Regulatory Officers Group Sub Saharan Africa, in January 2015 for a two-year term, providing Regulatory Policy and Strategy for mobile telecommunication companies operating in Sub Saharan Africa.
Akinwale has served on the Board of several Companies among which are the MTN Nigeria Foundation, Nigeria Internet Exchange Limited, The Digital Bridge Institute, the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria, the Lagos State Innovation Council and he continues to serve on the Board of the Redeemer’s International School and other private companies. Akinwale has been recognized as an authority, respected resource person and much sought after speaker locally and internationally in the realm of ICT Regulation & other utilities.
He is an alumnus of the Lagos State University, The Nigeria Law School and the Harvard Business School. Akinwale is an avid cyclist, a friend of the Arts particularly theatre and a firm believer in Social Responsibility.