Our Founders

Eme Essien Lore

Eme Essien Lore is an experienced development finance professional with a demonstrated history of effective team leadership resulting in measurable outcomes. She is also an advocate for a People-Planet-Profits Agenda in Africa and a thought leader on the role of organizational health in firm performance.

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Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli

Dr. Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli is a serial social entrepreneur who has founded, co-founded, and supported the emergence of 20 high-impact businesses, nonprofit organizations, and foundations operating across Africa. 

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Eme Essien Lore is an experienced development finance professional with a demonstrated history of effective team leadership resulting in measurable outcomes.  She is also an advocate for a People-Planet-Profits Agenda in Africa and a thought leader on the role of organizational health in firm performance.  With over 25 years of experience in development finance, specifically in Africa, she now focuses on how to enhance organizational health and corporate governance as a key driver for stronger development finance outcomes.

Eme spent over 17 years at the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group.  She served as Country Manager for IFC’s Nigeria office from 2014 through 2021.    As Country Manager, she had oversight of IFC’s investment and advisory activities in Nigeria, the largest single country exposure in Sub-Saharan Africa and fifth largest globally at over $2 billion in sectors including energy, manufacturing, healthcare and financial institutions.  She guided efforts for government engagement, business development, integrity due diligence, deal execution and portfolio management.  Eme has represented IFC as a speaker and panelist at scores of conferences and seminars to strategically position the IFC brand and underscore its mission.   As a member of the IFC Africa Department management team, she played an important role in the development and execution of the regional strategy.

She has significant experience working in the oil and gas sectors with global clients as well as in East Africa where she developed and processed business leads for a range of sectors and served on the advisory and executive boards of IFC investee private equity funds and microfinance institutions in the East Africa region.  During her time at IFC, she also took on oversight role of an Africa-wide portfolio of SME investment and capacity building projects.   She also supports the efforts of the IFC Africa corporate governance team to enhance business development activities.  As a senior advisor, she works with fund managers and other entities to develop and execute their Africa strategies, including ESG Africa where she is a Senior Advisor for Organizational Health.

Eme spent several years at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Africa Regional Office in Nairobi where she supported the development and execution of several initiatives, including youth employment and impact investing.   Her time at Rockefeller Foundation seeded her interest in the role of corporate philanthropy in development.   Her early years working in finance and investment banking honed her skills in financial analysis and appreciation for the need for investing for impact.  She is the chair of the African Children’s Hospital Foundation.

Eme is a skilled facilitator.  While serving as a Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Advocate at IFC and as a member of the IFC D&I Council, she has facilitated many senior level discussions on unconscious bias, a key learning tool for D&I awareness raising.  She is a certified Working Genius facilitator, helping teams, individuals and companies to improve productivity by identifying and utilizing the talents and passions of all team members.

She is a graduate of Columbia College at Columbia University; she also earned an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania; and an MA from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli is a serial social entrepreneur who has founded, co-founded, and supported the emergence of 20 high-impact businesses, nonprofit organizations, and foundations operating across Africa. She has almost three decades of experience in international development, philanthropy, and social innovation.

Ndidi serves on the boards of the Rockefeller Foundation, Fondation Chanel, Stanbic IBTC Group, the Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum, and the Bridgespan Group. She previously served on the Boards of the African Philanthropy Forum, Godrej Consumer Products India, Nestle Nigeria Plc, Nigerian Breweries (Heineken) Plc, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, and Cornerstone Insurance.

Ndidi holds an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, an undergraduate degree with honors from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town. She was a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, a visiting Scholar at Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University, an Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow, and an Eisenhower Fellow.

Ndidi is a TED speaker, was recognized as a Schwab Fellow and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and has received numerous awards and recognitions, including a National Honor by the Nigerian Government and the Harvard Business School Distinguished Alumni Award. She is the author of “Social Innovation in Africa: A Practical Guide for Scaling Impact,” and “Food Entrepreneurs in Africa: Scaling Resilient Agriculture Businesses,” both published by Routledge, “Walking for God in the Marketplace,” and contributed a chapter to For the World’s Profit: How Business Can Support Sustainable Development by the Brookings Institute.