People

Elizabeth is an entrepreneur and the founder of Lelapa. In 2015 she co-founded LelapaFund, an equity crowdfunding platform focused on East Africa, with Jerry Crossan. LelapaFund’s regulatory challenges led her to establish the African Crowdfunding Association (AfCA) along with other platforms and drive the regulatory agenda. She also founded Women in African Investments (WAI Group), an influential network of over 200 female investment professionals. Prior to that, she worked in academia and private sector in risk management and financial economics. Elizabeth holds several Board member and Advisory Board member positions in the industry and is a Council Member of Advancing Women in Investing (AWI). She holds a Masters in Economics from Sciences Po Paris, a B.Comm Honours in Economics from the University of Cape Town and a Certificate of Entrepreneurship from Stanford University. Elizabeth is a dual citizen of South Africa and France.

Nzwaki is a Chartered Accountant (CA) (SA) with over 12 years of experience working in strategic roles within the financial, impact and consulting sectors. Her background and passion for systems approaches, human-centred design, financial inclusion, entrepreneur development, and gender-lensed empowerment, have allowed her to bring unique perspectives and positive change to a range of organisations and projects across Africa. In her role as an impact network co-ordinator and financial innovation specialist to the Women in African Investments Group (WAI) at Lelapa, she provides high-level stakeholder engagement and partnership development within the African investment industry to address key systemic issues, manages projects in the innovative finance space and supports the overall network coordination, strategy and growth activities.