Topics of Interest

Financial Technologies – Fintech | Startups | Social Entrepreneurship | Social Innovation

Impact Borderless Digital (IBD) and Sote HUB  invite you to the 4^th International IBD Virtual Forum on 24th July 2020, 11:00 – 12:30 East Africa Time (EAT). The global forum will be graced by guest expert speakers: Martha Mghendi, Founder of the European Women Payments Network (EWPN) and Jakub Simek, a Financial Reporting Specialist.

Big Data, Blockchain, AI, and Platform as a Service (PaaS) are part of the megatrends revolutionising the way we transact business in the new normal that is a PostCovid19 world. Traditional linear pipeline models, mostly relying on limited analogue solutions, cannot match the pervasiveness, speed, and efficiencies the new era demands of innovative and globally connected enterprises.

“COVID-19 has been a disruptive, distractive, destructive, and distancing disease. Financial technologies (Fintech) foster an emerging borderless industry with limitless possibilities for the digital economy. The Fourth Industrial Revolution gives modern students and young professionals an accelerated push to master the innovations that exact digital footprints where it matters – money!”– Nashon J. Adero, Founder, IBD.

From 11:00 East Africa Time (EAT) on July 24, 2020, Impact Borderless Digital (IBD) will host an international virtual forum facilitated by the Founder, Nashon J. Adero, and moderated by Harry Mwailengo, a Co-Founder & Director of Coast Youth for Change and Manager at Sote HUB.  Job Ogweno, the CEO of Tsavo Media Group, will co-moderate. The two guest experts, Martha Mghendi and Jakub Simek, will speak on the evolving post-pandemic role of emergent financial technologies, startups, and social entrepreneurship.

Global young scholars and professionals will grace the virtual event. This follows the previous successful IBD virtual forums on Talents, Skills Development, and Resilience During and After COVID-19, held on May 29, 2020; Repositioning for Strategic Careers in the Post-COVID-19 Era, held on June 12, 2020; and Data and Decision Science: Post-Covid-19 Frontiers for Youth, held on July 10, 2020. Before the pandemic, IBD had already conducted Youth Talent and Career Fairs across six Kenyan counties. The inaugural IBD nationwide TV broadcast series, Talanta Talks, was aired live on January 30, 2020.

Join an interactive session with a progressive international audience of students, young professionals, and scholars drawn from Africa, Europe, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific, among others.

The Speakers

About Martha Mghendi

Martha is a fintech and payments professional, a social entrepreneur and a philanthropist. A dual citizen of The Netherlands & Kenya, Martha considers herself a global citizen. She is the Founder of European Women Payments Network (EWPN), the first and only pan-European network (community) dedicated to bringing together women from all EU/EEA member states, working in cards, fintech and payments. She has founded multiple organisations including Beyond Innocence Foundation and Wawida Education Fund. Martha serves in Sote Hub Advisory Board where she is leveraging her experience and accomplishments in empowering women in technology and financial services in refining Sote Hub strategy in growing startups from rural hubs.

About Jakub Simek

Jakub is in charge of strategy and fundraising. He works on social innovation and supporting social entrepreneurs in Slovakia and until 2012 was a Financial Reporting Specialist with experience in international development cooperation with 35 projects concluded, totalling 1.6 million Euros. He specialises in startup hubs, business education and practice companies in rural Kenya, international development, ICT integration in development and education, financial reporting and administration of grants, international project development and management. Jakub holds an Msc in Finance and International Relations.

The Hosting and Moderation Team

About Nashon Adero

Nashon Adero is the Founder of Impact Borderless Digital (IBD), a youth mentor, a thought leader and speaker with international exposure. Drawing on his multifaceted work experience cutting across government, industry and academia, Nashon identified mentorship as a critical missing link in the training of most African youth, leaving wide gaps in communication and employability skills. Based on the core values of diligence, excellence, and intergenerational responsibility,  he has since 2014 been mentoring youth on career development, culminating in founding his youth-centric Impact Borderless Digital (IBD) brand.

He is a Youth Mentor under Kenya’s Presidential Digital Talent Programme. Leveraging his thought leadership and mentorship skills is his membership in key expert groups such as the System Dynamics Society (SDS), The Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship (FORCE11), and Elsevier Researcher Academy. He is a regular columnist on matters of education and skills development for The African Executive, a weekly think tank bulletin.

Nashon is a geospatial expert and lecturer at Taita Taveta University, School of Mines and Engineering. He graduated from the University of Nairobi’s School of Engineering and later studied Resources Engineering and Mine Surveying in Germany at MSc (Karlsruhe) and PhD (Freiberg) levels, respectively. He has been trained in mentorship and public policy research & analysis at the Kenya School of Government and the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA). To enhance his soft skills, he has undertaken more than twenty support courses including Working in International Teams, Leadership and Intercultural Communication, and International Project Management under the “Empower Good Governance Programme” (TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany).

Host: Nashon Adero

Nashon was featured the Personality of the Week on 17th January 2020 by the Nation Media Group, publisher of Africa’s leading daily.

About Harry Mwailengo

Moderator: Harry Mwailengo

Besides being an Obama Foundation Fellow, Harry is an African Change Maker Fellow and an Ashoka Fellow. He is a Co-Founder & Director of Coast Youth for Change, serving as the Manager of Sote HUB that continues to spearhead, inculcate and incubate an innovation culture among the youth.

A confident, affable, and experienced community development worker with a special interest in the issues affecting rural communities, he has achieved success in getting communities involved in impactful and life-changing activities. He is an adept mobilizer and community event organizer, working with community leaders to change lives. Harry holds a Bachelor’s degree in Development Studies.

He focuses on Community Development and Social Work. Harry is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Development Studies.

About the Secretariat

The Tsavo Media Group CEO and Chief Editor of voi2day.com, Mr.job, will co-moderate and handle all media and publicity affairs. The Secretariat is composed of Taita Taveta University students, alumni and friends. They include students and DAAD scholars in the postgraduate engineering programme at Taita Taveta University and universities abroad: Mr. Dickson Wachira, Ms. Khadija Omar, Mr. Emmanuel Kiamba, and Ms. Fridah Valencia. They form part of the IBD mentees and the wider IBD National Youth Secretariat. Ms. Imelda Nasubo and Mr. Waruru Gitau, students of Mining Engineering at Taita Taveta University, are coordinating the undergraduate wing of forum participation.

Youth are encouraged to sign up for this free virtual impact workshop to benefit from the topical items of the day and ask questions. Stay tuned for subsequent series of talent talks, mentorship sessions, and targeted inspirational contents brought to you courtesy of the Impact Borderless Digital (IBD) brand.