The Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Impact Finance

Cape Town: 1 August 2018

This event is proudly co-hosted by Intelligent Impact, The Field Institute, Allan Gray Orbis Foundation Endowment and The Blockchain Academy.

About the speakers:

Aunnie Patton Power
Aunnie Patton Power is the founder of Intelligent Impact, an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, an Associate Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics’ Marshall Institute and an advisor to the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation at the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Graduate School of Business. A reformed M&A investment banker, she began her impact investing career in 2010 with Unitus Capital in Bangalore and has since worked with start-ups, intermediaries, funds, family offices, foundations, corporates and governments across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Aunnie has designed millions of dollars worth of innovative financing instruments including the first social impact bonds in Africa. Currently, Aunnie lectures on Innovative Finance, Impact Investing and Technology for Impact at UCT, Oxford and the London School of Economics and consults globally on the intersection of emerging technologies for impact finance and the creation of innovative financing and impact investing strategies for organizations.

Shaun Conway
Dr Shaun Conway is the founder of the Ixo Foundation and co-creator of TrustLab, a trust-tech venture production studio based in Cape Town. The ixo Foundation is a nonprofit open-source software development foundation building the ixo Blockchain for Impact. With ixo, all measurable changes that have an impact can now be transformed into Verified Impact Data, with crypto-economic Proof of Impact. Shaun is a clinically experienced physician with a career in Global Health and Sustainable Development.

Fleur Heyns
Fleur Heyns started her career in investment banking after graduating from Oxford University with a BSC in Biochemistry. At the age of 23 she co-founded and ran Africa’s first FinTech business, a retail derivatives trading platform Global Trader, expanded this to 4 continents and sold the company in 2007. After a short social entrepreneurship course in 2009 at INSEAD she decided to dedicate all her resources and effort to impact. She is an entrepreneur, investor and advisor to many impact initiatives that all share the same purpose of delivering on maximum impact in a commercially viable way. Her two latest ventures are 17AssetManagement, an asset management company in partnership with the UN based out of New York and Proof of Impact an impact verification company leveraging off block chain innovations incorporated in the Netherlands.

David Wood
David has a background in investment banking having developed derivative systems both locally and in London for organizations such as Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and the like. Having grown up on a farm in KwaZulu Natal and having developed systems for various game reserves he has an affinity for Africa’s wild spaces and animals. He is also painfully aware of the catastrophic failure of existing economic structures to address the external costs of economic activity, which is resulting in a crisis for Africa’s ecosystems and animals. David believes that new technologies, such as BlockChain, AI, IoT, etc, if applied correctly, can address these market failures and create a much better form of accounting and economy. To this end he has founded a startup called Wadappt which is a blockchain based smart contract platform that uses innovative financing techniques to allocate substantial amounts of capital directly into conservation efforts in Africa. A component of this platform includes impact investing. He is currently working with African Parks to launch the platform and is almost ready to allocate the first investment of $1m into a high impact project.

Sonya Kuhnel
Sonya Kuhnel has been interested in cryptocurrencies since late 2013 when she started a bitcoin payment company called Bitcoin Payments, a BitPay Affiliate partner, which allowed online merchants in South Africa to accept bitcoin as a payment method for goods and services. In 2014, Sonya co-founded Bitcoin Events, a company that hosts the Blockchain Africa Conferences in Cape Town and Johannesburg, the first of its kind in Africa. In 2015, Sonya founded the Blockchain Academy, which provides training and consulting on cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, world-wide. Sonya is also the Co-founder of Bitsure, which is an innovative payment platform that utilises blockchain technology to allow instant settlement and clearing of transactions in the retail industry. Sonya is also the co-organiser of the Bitcoin Cape Town Meetup Group, which has over 700 members to date. Sonya is passionate about disruptive technology, digital currencies and the blockchain technology. She feels there are a vast number of opportunities for using digital currencies and blockchain technology in both financial and non-financial industries and is therefore committed to educating people in South Africa on this exciting technology.

Danai Musandu
Danai is a member of the South Africa Goodwell team, where she is in charge of development of the investment process. She aspires to contribute to the inclusive growth for Africa and to ensure that local solutions answer local problems. Danai holds a BCom PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) and a postgraduate Honors Degree in Economics. Her previous involvement in UCT Upstarts and the UCT Entrepreneurs Society has fed her passion and interest in entrepreneurship and innovation in Africa. Danai and her team are currently working on a research project about the future of inclusive digital economy in Africa, having mapped and researched 2000 start-ups and scale-ups in Africa. She is particularly interested in the future of technology and sectorial convergences in Africa as a means of building digital infrastructure on the continent.