Michelle Matthews
“Conceptualising and creating relevant resources that help ambitious Africans to achieve their goals.”
Michelle is a Vulcan-Betazoid lovechild (and a bit of a sci-fi nerd). She is both very analytical/logical and able to connect with people's thoughts and feelings. Michelle puts her energies into making practical frameworks and convincing emotional appeals that could catalyze change.
Michelle is the director of Viridian, an end-to-end programmatic agency servicing the pan-African entrepreneurial ecosystem, and co-founder of NGO Book Dash, which has created hundreds of open-license titles and distributed nearly 3 million books to children who otherwise have none. Some of the products and frameworks that she's been instrumental in developing include the African Angel Academy and the UK-SA Tech Hub Launch League Let's Talk Financing toolkit. She has a BPhil in Sustainable Development (Stellenbosch, 2011) and serves on the Sustainability Institute's advisory board. She is currently studying part-time at UCT's Graduate School of Business; her MPhil in Inclusive Innovation focuses on how impact investors make decisions when investing in early-stage impact ventures in Africa.
Interests: Gardening (it's absorbing, rewarding, and a metaphor for life).
Organization: Viridian