About Us

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Teresa H. Clarke is the chairman and CEO of Africa.com LLC. She launched the company in 2010 after resigning from her position as a managing director in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs & Co.

Ms. Clarke’s goals for Africa.com are twofold: to change the way the world sees Africa, and to be the online platform for those changes. Africa.com is the fastest growing Africa-related website, with nearly three million page views per month.

At Goldman Sachs & Co, Ms. Clarke led mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance transactions for Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. and in Europe. She also led the Goldman Sachs Africa-Aspen Program, a leadership development project for emerging public- and private-sector African leaders. The program was developed in cooperation with the Aspen Institute.

Ms. Clarke lived in South Africa from 1995-2000, during which time she taught corporate finance in the MBA program at Wits Business School and served on the investment committee of a private equity fund that invested in the Southern Africa region.

A desire to help fill the leadership pipeline in South Africa led Ms. Clarke to co-found the Student Sponsorship Programme. SSP provides academically talented but economically disadvantaged South African students with career mentors and scholarships to attend private schools. SSP has provided scholarships to more than 600 South African high school students, valued at more than $10 million since its inception more than a decade ago. Over 90 percent of the programme’s graduates go on to attend university.

Ms. Clarke is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the boards of the Student Sponsorship Programme South Africa, Southern Africa Legal Services (Legal Resource Centre), the Tony Elumelu Foundation, the Opportunity Agenda, and the Harvard Business School Club of New York City. She has received numerous awards, including one from the government of South Africa for her work with South Africa’s children. She has been featured on television, including a documentary by Carol Pineau, “Africa Investment Horizons,” and was honored in 2010 on BET’s “Black Girls Rock.” Ms. Clarke was named one of the 25 Most Influential Women in Business in 2011 by the Network Journal.

Ms. Clarke received a bachelor's degree in economics, cum laude, from Harvard College, an MBA from Harvard Business School and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

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As chief operating officer at Africa.com, Mel brings a focus on developing and delivering on the company's growth strategy. He has advised mobile communication and internet start-ups, and serves on the advisory board of Africa's Talking Ltd, a mobile communications solutions platform headquartered in Kenya.

Mel joined Africa.com after an eight year career at Goldman Sachs where he was a Vice President. He began his career at Goldman as a structured finance banker where he led multi-million dollar securitization transactions and developed capital and risk solutions for clients in the mortgage industry. He then transitioned into a trading role on the structured credit investing desk, where he led investment analysis for securitized products. More recently, he was a lead risk manager for the firm's Global Credit Trading and Leveraged Finance businesses.

Mel serves on the board of the Children of Kibera Foundation, an organization that provides educational opportunities for under served children in Kenya's largest urban slum. He holds a high honors degree in economics from Swarthmore College.

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Jacqueline Adams has more than two decades of experience as an Emmy Award-winning CBS News correspondent covering the White House. In the 1990s, she described her beat as “mayhem and the arts.” She covered the Jeffrey Dahmer and Colin Ferguson murder trials for the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, and also developed an expertise in French impressionism and 20th-century African-American art while reporting a series of blockbuster exhibits for CBS News Sunday Morning.

A natural “connector” and talented interviewer and moderator, Ms. Adams launched a second career as a communications strategist. She has a strong track record of hearing clients’ strategic concerns and finding creative solutions, often drawing on her wealth of contacts and experiences.

In 2006, she became a senior counselor to the global communications strategy firm, Burson-Marsteller, and in that role introduced several new corporate and public affairs clients to the firm. She served as a client leader, a media advisor, and an ambassador to the foreign affairs, education, business, arts, and civic communities in which she is active.

Ms. Adams is a member of the Board of Directors of the acclaimed KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Charter Schools in New York City and has served on a number of non-profit boards. She was the chairman of the governing board of the Off-the-Record Lecture Series, the oldest, largest women’s foreign policy lecture series in the U.S. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Chairman's Council of the New-York Historical Society.

A graduate of Harvard University's Graduate School of Business, she is active in several alumni organizations and is a member of the Program Committee of the Harvard Club of New York City. 

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Professor Nick Binedell is the founding director and Sasol chair of strategic management of the Gordon Institute of Business Science, a business school situated in Illovo, Johannesburg and established in January 2000, by the University of Pretoria. He also serves on the Association of MBAs (AMBA) International Management Board, the international impartial authority on post-graduate business education.

After an initial career in the industry in the mining and manufacturing sectors in sales and general management in the Barlow Rand Group, Mr. Binedell has focused his career for the past 20 years in the area of business education.

His academic qualifications include a Ph.D from the University of Washington in Seattle, an MBA from the University of Cape Town, and a bachelor of commerce degree from Rhodes University.
In 1998, he was invited to establish a new business school focused on meeting the individual and corporate needs of business in South Africa.

The school has rapidly established itself as a leading business school in South Africa with a strong focus on partnering with leading South African corporates and providing a high level of local and international business education. It was recently ranked as one of the top 40 global executive education providers by the London Financial Times.

Mr. Binedell is a determined traveler and explorer. His earlier roots included extensive travel and by the time he was 10 he had lived in Zimbabwe, Germany, Yemen, Kenya, South Africa, and Britain. He has spent five years in the United States and in the past three years has traveled to Sydney, Shanghai, Dubai, Prague, Budapest, and Lagos, as well as European and American cities.

His area of expertise is in the field of business strategy formulation and his academic and consulting work, although dominantly in South Africa, includes work in the United States, Europe, and Australia.

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Lauren Cole brings to Africa.com a depth of knowledge around setting up and launching media-related businesses.

As president of Cole Media, her clients include cable channels, mobile content services, video-on-demand, and broadband companies, both in the U.S. and internationally. Past and present clients include TV Guide, E! Entertainment, Verizon Wireless, Network Live (AOL/XM Radio/AEG), TV One (Radio One/Comcast), Technicolor, Live Earth, Sony Pictures Entertainment, GSN, Granada America, Bennett Productions, Withoutabox, World Championship Sports Network, National Lampoon, Peoplejam, HBO Latin America, and Anthony Robbins Companies.

Prior to establishing Cole Media, she spent many years at Sony Pictures Entertainment in the International Television division where she was responsible for launching, making investments in, and supervising Sony's cable channel investments in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Australia. Cole also headed up operations for Columbia TriStar International Television.  She was chief operating officer of PacketVideo Corporation, the first company with technology and applications to stream video over wireless devices. Under her supervision, PacketVideo established contractual relationships with over 200 global media and internet companies, including all of the major studios, and numerous major broadcasters, cable companies, and streaming media companies around the world.  She also worked in Warner Bros.' Strategic Planning Dept, and was an associate consultant at Bain and Company.

Cole graduated with honors in Applied Mathematics from Harvard College and has an M.B.A from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
 

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Charles Crockett is a co-founder of the Ascend Venture Group, a venture capital firm headquartered in New York City that targets investment opportunities in the applied technology and for-profit education industries. Ascend has approximately $150 million under management. Mr. Crockett was responsible for Ascend’s investments in several datacenter infrastructure companies including Snap Appliance (sold to NASDAQ: ADPT), Netilla Networks (sold to AEP Networks) and GridApp Systems. In addition, he led investments in a variety of technology enabled services companies including SafeRent (sold to NYSE: FAF), Tripology (sold to Rand McNally) and Send Word Now.

Before co-founding Ascend, Mr. Crockett was a director with The Beacon Group, a $2 billion private equity firm where he identified, executed and monitored principal investment transactions in a variety of industries including Titan Methanol Company (sold to NASDAQ: MEOH) and Identity Group (sold to Bessemer). He also serves on the board of directors of Send Word Now, the worldwide leader in emergency notification and incident management. He started his career in the Structured Finance Group at Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Mr. Crockett was recognized as a member of the Root 100 for 2010, a group of 100 top young African-American pace setters and groundbreakers. He is a member of the Alumni Leadership Committee of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and is a Key Influencer of Interactive One. Formerly, he was a member of the Stanford Law School Board of Visitors, the New York Software Industry Association Board of Directors and the LEAD (Leadership Education and Development) Program Board of Directors.

Mr. Crockett is a recipient of the Award of Merit by Stanford Associates and a Co-Founder of the Stanford Law School Black Alumni Association. He received his JD from Stanford Law School and his BS from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. 

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Jayanthi K. Daniel comes to Africa.com from the position of online editor for food publication SAVEUR Magazine. She oversaw a content and design re-launch in 2009, and spearheaded the brand’s first social media strategy which produced a 600 percent increase in Twitter followers in February 2010.

Prior to joining Africa.com, Ms. Daniel was also a content specialist for Churnless, a digital strategy firm consisting of designers, engineers and communications strategists. The firm builds new sites and helps small business sites connect with a broader network of investors and partners, all in the name of doing good work and giving web users good products and helpful service.

Her first job out of school was at the now-defunct New York Sun newspaper, where she was the dining and wine editor, as well as an associate sports editor.

Ms. Daniel graduated from Columbia University in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in English, and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, earning her M.S. in 2005.
 

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Chinedu Echeruo is a Nigerian-born entrepreneur.  He founded HopStop.com in 2005, a website that provides free customized public transit directions, as well as other related features and information relevant to public transit. HopStop.com currently provides directions in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Delaware, London, New Jersey, New York, Paris, Philadelphia, Providence, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.

He also founded Tripology.com and worked at JPMorgan Chase in the Mergers & Acquisitions and Leveraged Finance Groups. He helped structure $624 million financing for Clayton, Dubilier & Rice’s acquisition of Dynatech and assisted in the sale of American Home Products’ food division to Hicks, Muse, Tate and Furst for $1.23 billion.

He is a partner with Constant Capital, a leading financial advisory services company and issuing house which provides top quality services to privately-held and publicly-traded companies in Africa and to domestic and international institutional investors.

Mr. Echeruo holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS from Syracuse University.

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Ambassador Jendayi E. Frazer serves as Carnegie Mellon University’s distinguished public service professor. She is also the director of Carnegie Mellon's new Center for International Politics and Innovation (CIPI), where she is particularly interested in utilizing technology and applying innovative solutions to core issues of development and governance in Africa. In the fall of 2011, she will be publishing "Preventing Electoral Violence in Africa," an edited volume that grew out of a Carnegie Mellon conference that was held in Accra, Ghana in March 2010.

Ambassador Frazer was the leading architect of U.S.-Africa policy over the last decade, most recently serving as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs from August 2005 to January 2009. She was special assistant to the President and senior director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from January 2001 until her swearing-in as the first woman U.S. ambassador to South Africa in June 2004.

Her current research on security focuses on strengthening civilian control of the military; mediation and conflict resolution; and establishing regional cooperative security arrangements. Ambassador Frazer is a frequent guest on television and radio programs, and she is the author of several articles, book chapters, and opinion essays.  She has just been named adjunct senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Professor Frazer received her B.A. degree in Political Science (honors) and African and Afro-American Studies (distinction) in 1985, and M.A. degrees in International Policy Studies in 1985 and International Development Education in 1989, and a Ph.D. in Political Science, 1994 all from Stanford University. 

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Anna Getaneh is a former acclaimed international model, a humanitarian and social entrepreneur. She is also the founder and Creative Director of African Mosaique, a clothing design, manufacturing and retail company in Johannesburg, South Africa.

African Mosaique was inspired by the relatively weak presence of direct African participation in leading fashion platforms internationally. It began in New York as a non-profit and now with a commercial wing established in Johannesburg, Anna designs a core collection seasonally and represents and collaborates with established and emerging African designers. Its core philosophy is to help develop the African fashion Industry and designers, and by manufacturing within Africa help provide jobs and sustain traditions and ultimately build a Luxury African Brand.

Anna’s hallmark is her passion about children and development. She is the founder and Executive Chairman of the Ethiopian Children’s Fund, ECF, a U.S. 501c3 not-for profit social enterprise and registered NGO in Ethiopia, with development operations and investments in Ethiopia. She spearheaded the establishment of The ECF Village, an integrated development project for children and young people in Aleltu, 55km north of Addis Ababa. It comprises a school, a health clinic, a feeding centre, a vocational centre and environmental programmes for 600 poor, vulnerable children, mostly orphans.

Anna speaks English, French, and Amharic, and has a BA degree in Marketing and Business Management Studies, from the University of Maryland. She is the mother of two and currently resides in Johannesburg, South Africa.
 

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Talia Harrison joins the South African sales team as an online sales representative. She graduated from Midrand University in 2005 having completed a bachelor of arts degree as well as a post graduate certificate, specializing in advertising. She began working as a graphic designer and soon became the head of design for a media agency in Johannesburg. Talia was later introduced into the world of sales and account management and worked on the Edcon account, one of the largest retailers in Southern Africa. Her passion for meeting new people, embracing challenges, sound presentation skills and a highly creative and inquisitive mind has assisted her in staying at the forefront of an ever-changing industry.

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Justina Hierta manages Africa.com's core administrative and financial activities, bringing a focus on building organizational capacity and delivering results. 

She has worked with a local NGO in Burkina Faso, conducted primary research in Rwanda on civil society and justice, and in China on the politics of its international trade relations. 

Ms. Hierta joined Africa.com after three years at Goldman Sachs, where she worked as a banks research analyst during the financial crisis, and led a multi-divisional employee-initiated microfinance initiative.

She holds a BA in Government from Harvard University and an MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics. 

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Laura Joseph is a principle architect of Africa.com's innovative “Safari Wizard” product. She combines her passion and knowledge of the African bush with her love of travel and indeed lives in the African bush at her lodge in Limpopo, South Africa.

Ms. Joseph spent the last 26 years in management consulting and financial services and has experience in human resource management, strategy, finance, project management, governance and leadership development.

She holds a bachelor's degree in business administration and her further studies include coach training through Stellenbosch Business School, and Middlesex University. She is also a certified NLP practitioner and qualified project manager. The underpinnings of her coaching include Gestalt, Time to Think, Arbinger, and a philosophy that every human being is talented and has a unique contribution to make. Professional memberships include PMI and COMENSA.

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Vusi Khanyile is chairman of Thebe Investment Corporation, one of South Africa’s leading African investment management companies. Assets under management are approximately R5.5 billion, with investment activities across various sectors including tourism, mining resources, petrochemicals, telecommunications and healthcare. Having persuaded key individuals that an investment fund should be set up to finance community projects, Mr. Khanyile helped to establish Thebe Investment Corporation in 1992. In 2011, he was honored with the "Olivers" Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the 10th Metropolitan Oliver Empowerment Awards. The Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), an organization created by the South African government, offers this distinction to transformational leaders.

A community activist for most of his adult life, Mr. Khanyile has participated in numerous development programs and community-based organizations.

Mr. Khanyile has served as director on a number of listed and unlisted companies, and serves on various boards in a non-executive capacity, such as Shell SA Refinery and Vodacom SA. He is also the Independent Chairman of Santam, South African market leaders in short term insurance underwriting and Lead Independent Director of the JD Group, a leading furniture and appliance retailer.

Mr. Khanyile started his working career in the finance division of Anglo American Corporation and ran his own finance company before taking an appointment as special assistant to the Vice Chancellor at the University of Cape Town, where he became deputy registrar. He was head of finance in the African National Congress from 1990 to 1992.

He holds an Honours degree in Accounting and Finance from the University of Birmingham, a Fellowship in Development Finance at Princeton University and an Honorary Doctorate from the Walter Sisulu University.
 

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Syed Imran Moinuddin brings to Africa.com a wealth of experience in both enterprise-level IT management and start-up technological build-out as the founder & CEO of NexDegree based in Karachi, Pakistan.

Prior to founding the company in 2005, he worked as a research analyst and consultant for a biometrics consulting firm in New York City where his clients included both private and government institutions such as the Department of Homeland Security, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), White House Office of Science & Technology Policy and Honeywell.

He specializes in the areas of web and mobile products conceptualization & implementation, systems/infrastructure performance optimization and information security and has served clients in all major continents.  Imran holds a BS degree in computer science from Stanford University.
 

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Stephen Newton is the CEO of E-Commerce Platforms in South Africa for Naspers, a multinational media company. He has spent close to a decade growing and leading successful and profitable on-line companies.

Mr. Newton previously served as vice president and managing director of inMobi Africa, the world’s largest mobile advertising platform. He took this position after he had led Google South Africa, where he launched local versions of Google Maps and StreetView as well as YouTube.

Mr. Newton began his career as general manager and part of the founding team of Hitwise UK. He helped the organization more than double its employees, customers and revenues, and consistently over-achieved company revenue targets in one of the group’s most profitable divisions. His efforts were pivotal in the eventual sale of Hitwise to the consumer information company, Experian.

Post-Hitwise, Mr. Newton served as the vice president of DoubleClick’s Ad Exchange covering the Europe, Middle East and African markets (EMEA). In the Google acquisition of DoubleClick, he took on the role of head of analytics & commerce EMEA, where he was responsible for the Google Analytics product (GA) and growing the third party GA proposition.

A native of Philadelphia, Mr. Newton received his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington and his JD from Loyola School of Law in Los Angeles. He speaks conversational Spanish, functional French and is currently learning Portuguese.

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Olumide Oluwole comes from J.P. Morgan where he worked for six years in business development roles. He was successful in relationship building and positioning the bank's products to provide solutions to large corporate clients. He enjoys client interactions in which he employs a consultative approach to understand his client needs and offers solutions leveraging quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Prior to J.P. Morgan, Olumide spent time working with pharmaceutical/biotech companies Johnson & Johnson/Centocor, Abbot Laboratories, and Pfizer in sales and strategic marketing roles, as well as Florida State Board within their Domestic Equities group.

Mr. Oluwole holds a degree in Business Finance from Florida A&M University.

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Kellee Patterson brings cross-industry operational and financial experience to Africa.com’s business strategy.

She joined Africa.com after working as the finance manager of sustainable food start-up Basis Farm to Chef LLC. Prior to that, she worked as a private wealth management financial analyst at Goldman Sachs & Co.

She holds an AB in psychology from Harvard College.

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Foluso Phillips is the executive chairman of Phillips Consulting Limited (PCL), a business and management consulting firm with offices in Lagos, Johannesburg, London and Kenya. An industrial economist and chartered accountant, he has tremendous experience in finance, business administration, general management and organization development.

His work record spans automotive, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, distribution and management consulting.  Mr. Phillips spent six years with the then Coopers & Lybrand in the UK (now PWC) as a management consultant, focusing on varied assignments across the African continent.

He is very committed to the African renaissance and sits on many boards as a director, trustee or shareholder of commercial organizations, NGOs and charities. He is the newly-elected chairman of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group, and of the South Africa-Nigeria Chamber of Commerce. He also serves on the advisory Board of the African Leadership Academy, as a director of the Special Olympics of Nigeria, a trustee of the AFW Foundation for Peace and Conflict resolution, a member of the African Business Roundtable, and a member of the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa.

Mr. Phillips is the publisher of the West Africa edition of the Business in Africa Magazine.
 

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A producer, director, and creative force behind a wide range of quality television projects, George Rivera launched his own production company in 1991.

While a student at Harvard, the Harlem native began his television career at WGBH-TV in Boston, where he rose through the ranks to become producer and director of a wide variety of multi-camera programs. Later returning to New York, Mr. Rivera was a documentary producer at WCBS-TV before joining ABC News, for which he was often part of the first wave of journalists to critical situations of armed conflict abroad. An active member of the Directors Guild of America, Mr. Rivera has won a variety of awards for his work as both a director and producer, including five Emmys. As a consultant, Mr. Rivera helped to launch Turkey’s first privately operated television station, STAR-TV, and was a critical member of the start-up team of Satellite News Channel. He was also acting director of programming for news and public affairs at New York’s WNET.

George Rivera Productions, his creative services company now known as the Fresh Bread Group, is based in New York’s East Harlem along with Digital Laundry, a digital archiving, asset management, production services, and studio rental company launched by Mr. Rivera in 2008. Always dedicated to training the next generation of broadcast journalists, Mr. Rivera has taught graduate level courses at Columbia School of Journalism and Long Island University, and serves on the board of the Borough of Manhattan Community College.

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Daniel Sodkiewicz leads Africa.com's web development team with his strong background in computer science, engineering, and networks. His career has recently focused on high level coding and server management of web-based applications and electronic media solutions.

Using his previous experience as an owner of a web design company and his education, he is shaping the long term technology strategy and operations for Africa.com.

He began his college career at the University of Technology in Wroclaw, Poland and has studied electrical engineering at the City University of New York.

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Frank Webb comes to Africa.com’s business development role with a proven track record for building businesses in several industries.

Within the realm of finance, he spent seventeen years on Wall Street, culminating in his role as a managing director at JP Morgan Investment Management. As the Head of Client Service, he served on the management team for Client Service, Acquisition and Marketing, which drove annual sales plans for the institutional investment business, assessed client satisfaction and designed strategies for business development and retention. Leading a team of 75 professionals, he was the architect of the firms’ worldwide client experience, spearheading initiatives ranging from product development, process re-engineering, client communications and technology enablement.

In 2004, Mr. Webb decided to pursue his creative passions and converted his life-long interest in interior design into a new business. Joining with world-renowned designer, Matthew White, he brought a modernist’s design sensibility and seasoned business acumen to the new partnership. The firm was renamed White Webb, LLC, and is now heralded as one of the country’s top design firms. Their work is regularly published in all of the national design publications, including Architectural Digest, as well as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and countless blogs in the US and abroad. In addition to their interiors work, they have developed several successful furniture lines, as well as a highly acclaimed website, on which they host their immensely popular blog, World White Webb.

Mr. Webb holds a degree in international economics from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, as well as a certificate in international business from Nijenrode, the Netherlands School of Business. He is involved with a number of non-profit organizations, having lent volunteer assistance to The Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, The Roundabout Theatre Company, and the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance.

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Mission
Africa.com's mission is to change the way the world sees Africa and to be the online portal for the world's engagement with Africa.

Vision
Africa.com is the fastest growing Africa-related internet site. Visitors have access to financial, political and cultural news, maps, information about world-wide events and non-profit organizations related to Africa as well as views from opinion-leaders. Our users will soon have the benefit of Safari Wizard, a customized and personalized search function to help them find just the right safari.

What do you see when you look at our logo?
We know that our logo is a bit controversial – or confusing, like Africa itself.

We see a lion, but others see a bird, a lizard, or a condensed map of the continent. The answers are as varied as Africa itself.

History
Re-launched in February, 2010, Africa.com is a love story.  Read more from founder Teresa Clarke's first blog posting.