Our first Ghanaian voice in this series is a legend on the London-based investment management scene.
Dawid Konotey-Ahulu is an entrepreneur in financial services, technology and elderly care and the co-founder of Redington, the London-based independent pensions and insurance advisory group with $500 bn in assets under advisement, as well as mallowstreet.com, a social media platform connecting the pensions and insurance industry.
In celebration of Ghana’s 2022 Independence Day, celebrated on March 6, 2022, we are delighted to bring you a bonus series featuring a collection of inspiring Ghanaian voices at home and away.
Julia Kwamya is an associate at Tikehau Capital, the global alternative asset manager, based in NYC. She has trained as an actor, musician and voiceover artist and has released her first album “Feel Good about Feeling Bad”. We are featuring songs from this album on this entire Series 5 of 2023. She has been Creator in Residence at Kickstarter, as well as a casting assistant among other roles in the entertainment industry. She studied economics at Pepperdine University.
Adam Demuyakor is the founder and managing partner at Wilshire Lane Capital, a venture capital and private equity firm that focuses on PropTech solutions based in Los Angeles California. Born in the US to a family originally from Ghana, Adam started out on Wall Street in investment banking and held a number of private equity and venture capital roles before found in Wilshire Lane. He also holds a number of Board roles and is a Board of Trustee of the education nonprofit 9 Dots.
In our second series focused on founders, allocators and investors on the Frontier – we hear from a diverse group of professionals who share their vision for investing, impact and change. From venture capitalists focused on the burgeoning world of Prop-Tech, to investing with a gender lens, developing a network to change the black narrative in the professional world, to harnassing the power of music royalties, to payment platforms – we share insights from the coalface.
Adam Demuyakor is the founder and managing partner at Wilshire Lane Capital, a venture capital and private equity firm that focuses on PropTech solutions based in Los Angeles California. Born in the US to a family originally from Ghana, Adam started out on Wall Street in investment banking and held a number of private equity and venture capital roles before found in Wilshire Lane. He also holds a number of Board roles and is a Board of Trustee of the education nonprofit 9 Dots.
Andara Kamara works at the tax policy unit in Ghana’s Ministry of Finance. In this podcast, in which she is interviewed by Justina Etteh, she describes her path into the role, and how she first studied Development, expecting to use her skills in an international institution.
Justina Etteh is a transaction banking associate at a large global investment bank, based in London. She hails from Ghana and participated in a graduate training program sponsored by that bank that recruited her directly from Ghana.
Raymond Onovwigun is founder and CEO at Romco Group, which trades and processes non-ferrous metal. Founded in 2015, it now employs over 180 people in Nigeria, over 50 in Ghana, and another 15 in the UK and is on track to have revenues of £40m by the end of this year. Ray has a fascinating journey that has taken him from South London, to founding a successful plumbing business while still at university to his current quest to help to close the sustainability gap in Africa.
Our conversation starts with his Nigerian heritage, how he learned the meaning of hard work through following his mother around in her cleaning business in London, what interested in him in plumbing and how he perceived a business opportunity.
Adam Demuyakor is the founder and managing partner at Wilshire Lane Capital, a venture capital and private equity firm that focuses on PropTech solutions based in Los Angeles California. Born in the US to a family originally from Ghana, Adam started out on Wall Street in investment banking and held a number of private equity and venture capital roles before found in Wilshire Lane. He also holds a number of Board roles and is a Board of Trustee of the education nonprofit 9 Dots.Our conversation starts with his family roots, and the expectations that accompanied his schooling and career choices. We hear how he came to be interested in real estate and how he gained experience in both the private and public side of the business, and ultimately the vision with which he launched his own firm. This is an opportunity for our discussion to dive into PropTech and discuss what the technology that is transforming real estate looks like, and how these theses are playing out. Among some of the concepts discussed are Ghost Kitchens and the new look Self Storage outfits, and we discuss some of the business models that are exciting him most at this juncture.As an early stage venture capital firm, Wilshire Lane Capital, is highly focused on the entrepreneurs and their vision that they support, and many of them are diverse founders themselves. In fact in an industry in which female and black and brown founders are poorly represented, Wilshire Lane is breaking the mould – 36% of their companies are led by women outright, 29% of their companies have a black founder on them, and 79% of their companies have an underrepresented minority or a female in the C suite. Wilshire Lane Capital recently entered into a strategic partnership with Nile Capital which sponsored our original diverse founders and VCs series, and we speak about how these ideas came together. We speak about 9 Dots, a nonprofit, based in Los Angeles, that focuses on providing subsidized computer science courses for the poorest students in the city. Adam shares why this is one of the most fulfilling of all of his roles. Finally, we discuss some highs and lows of his career so far, what Adam looks for in a founder and what it means to pass the “Shower Test”. This podcast will feature in our mini-series featuring professionals from the Ghanaian diaspora as well as our second diverse founders and venture capitalist series.