Yasmin Belo-Osagie was born in Boston United States of America but grew up in Nigeria. Yasmin attended a boarding school in England before graduating from Princeton University USA. She also attended Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and London.
Belo-Osagie is also pursuing a joint JD/MBA from Harvard Law School and Stanford Graduate School of Business. She has worked at McKinsey & Co for 2 years as a consultant where she focused on developing multi-year growth strategies for large organizations. McKinsey & Company is the trusted advisor and counselor to many of the world's most influential businesses and institutions.
Her Work:
In 2013, Yasmin Belo-Osagie cofounded She Leads Africa which has helped to nurture hundreds of aspiring, ambitious female entrepreneurs, with support from companies including Intel, Guaranty Trust Bank, Huawei, and Etisalat. She leads the events and offline programming team. She Leads Africa (SLA) is a women’s social enterprise based in Nigeria that seeks to address challenges women on the continent face in creating, growing, and sustaining their businesses and professional services. SLA provides online platform, offering articles and materials on business advice, which is specifically tailored to entrepreneurship on the continent.
Her vision to see African women excel in their businesses did not just end with cofounding SLA. In 2015, Belo-Osagie took five female entrepreneurs to China to meet with successful women entrepreneurs and China-based investors interested in Africa.
She has also hosted versions of her professional boot camp, the SheHive , in Lagos, Nigeria; Johannesburg, South Africa, and other cities.
In 2016, Yasmin was nominated as one of the Fast Company’s most creative people in business, along with 99 other people. She was chosen because of her role in developing female entrepreneurs.
Why TechHer loves her:
Belo-Osagie's vision is to turn Africa into a digital destination full of career-driven “Motherland Moguls". This is in line with She Leads Africa's vision which is to become the #1 digital destination for smart and ambitious young African women.
Her three key advice which are ensuring that one's to-do lists have deadlines, delegating tasks and having someone who keeps you accountable are major headers in building successful businesses. As tech savy people, we also believe that if these are applied to tech ideas; growth will be inevitable.
Belo-Osagie’s dreams are continent-sized, but with thousands of women in her sphere, we have no doubt she’s going to help women entrepreneurs not just in Africa but globally. We truly support her, why shouldn't we?
Irene Charnley was born on the 6th of May, 1960 and hails from South Africa. She is the chief executive officer of Smile Telecom Holdings- a company that offers a range of broadband solutions.
She achieved a full listing of MTN Holdings through M-Cell Limited and played a leading role in its transformation into one of the pre-eminent black-empowered companies on the JSE.
She has a certificate in Graphic Art, Reproduction and Technology from College of London of Printing, England. Irenne also bagged a certificate in Industrial Relations from University of the Witwatersrand.
She is a member of the Commonwealth Partnership for Technology Management and National Retirement Coordinating Committee.
Ms. Irene is also an Institute of Retirement Funds councilor and a member of the Pensions Advisory Board. The board advises South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel on policy issues.
Charnley serves as Chairperson of Orbicom, MTN Network Solutions, Mobile Telephone Networks Holdings, Airborn and Member of the King Committee on Corporate. She is also a social entrepreneur and a non-executive Director of MTN (one of Africa's leading telecommunications players) & FirstRand Bank. Charnley is also a Director at Johnnic communications.
In August 2000, she was elected Businesswoman of the Year in recognition of her entrepreneurship and outstanding contribution. She played a major role in the success and transformation of Johnnic from an industrial conglomerate to a focused media, entertainment and telecommunications group.
Charnley was awarded Business Woman of the year in 2000 and nominated as one of the top 50 businesswomen outside of the USA by Fortune Magazine.
Her Work:
Irene Charnley spent 13 years with the National Union of Mineworkers and played a strategic role in heading up the services pillar, coordinating the legal, housing, research and social security divisions in South Africa.
She was the Commercial Director at the MTN Group, responsible for the company’s strategic investments and international expansion activities. Irene also serves as a Director on a number of company boards, a member of the King Committee on Corporate Governance and is an International Marketing Council Board Member.
Charnley served as an Executive Director of ElementOne Limited since February 1997 and served as Director of Johnnic Holdings Limited from November 1996 to September 2003.
Ms Irene served as a Director of Metropolitan Holdings, formerly New Africa Capital Group Ltd from 2001 to December 2004.
In 2007, Irene Charnley steped down as an executive director of MTN but remained a member of one of the richest boards of directors in South Africa. She served as Chairperson of South African Broadcasting Corporation since July 2009.
Why Tech Her Loves Her:
She is hardworking, determined and has crafted a niche in the tech-space globally. We use this as another opportunity to encourage other women not to see gender as a limitation to achieving and impacting their society rather as a yardstick to strive to be the best at whatever they are doing.
Emma Kaye is the founder and CEO of a full funded start-up venture called Bozza. Born in Zimbabwe, Emma studied business marketing and computer programming at Oxford Brookes University, England and from there moved to London.
Emma has a number of seminal business and industry ventures to her name, and attained multiple professional accolades and leading-light endorsements in the course of her career spanning 15 years. Emma was nominated as the first African to sit on the board of the prestigious MEF, the Mobile Entertainment Forum, the global voice of entertainment on the mobile phone.
Emma Kaye is the founder and CEO of Bozza. Bozza is a technology platform that enables young African musicians, filmmakers and poets to connect with fans who want locally relevant content via their mobile device, desktop and free-to-air satellite television.
TechHer is proud of Emma Kaye for her outstanding performances in entrepreneurial and Technology fields. She was one of the top 100 business women in South Africa while also being nominated as one of the top 5 women in Africa in Science and Technology.
About Her:
Ire hails from Ogun state. She was born into the family of Late Mr Tayo and Mrs Olunfunlola Aderinokun. Ire had a bit of career crisis which made her switch from several educational background and finally decided to be a professional Software developer and User Interface designer. Here’s more on the switch in her educational background:
She is currently the Head of Designs and Tech at Big Cabal Media, the publishers of online publications such as TechCabal and Zikoko. Ire has designed and worked on several open source side projects as a freelancer.
Her Work:
Ire has designed and worked on several open source side projects at TechCabal as a freelancer and an employee.
She designed the website http://www.studioofmode.com/ for Studio of Mode; a company that creates space for the voice of creativity with several skills that can be clearly understood.
Miss Aderinokun created an App called Formback; a hackable sass -based form reset for forms.
She designed “Designers News for Pebble"; an application for the pebble smartwatch that displays the top and recent stories from Designer News.
One of Aderinokun project is Instachrome; an extension for Google Chrome that displays Instagram posts from a tag of your choice which has over 200 active users.
She created a blog called "Bits of Code" for self-taught web developers. The blog was geared when she was struggling to get clients.
A fun bot for slacks that mimics Dj Khaleed called 'Khaleed Bot' was featured on ProductHunt.
She designed a free theme marketplace for ghost blogging platform called Open Writer. It has been featured in a list of superb Free and Premium Ghost Themes.
Miss Ire designed the Unofficial 'canIuse Embed'; which is an embedded widget to display updates from www.caniuse.com which displays feature support data for multiple versions of the major browsers such as Chrome, Firefox etc.
Some of her favorites works are Le Retail, Bode Agusto, and Supper Club among others.
Why TechHer Loves Her:
We are inspired by her learning skills on web development and user interface. It shows her passion towards technology. Her switch in career was more about confidence in her abilities. This would inspire women who think they are not capable of doing something different from what they studied in school or what seem comfortable to them.
