Nana Francois is CEO of Opportunity International UK, a charity which works to advance microfinance and sustainable enterprise, education and agriculture – a hand up not a hand out – and to build impact investing opportunities in Africa and the Global South.
Nana was formerly Director of Investment Solutions at FaithInvest, a UK non-profit which works globally with faith-based asset-owning institutions of all faith and sizes. She was working with groups at all stages of the investment journey, to support them to align their assets (financial investments, land, real estate) to their own faith-consistent investment principles.
Nana comes with a wealth of professional banking and investments experience from alternative investments to developed and emerging markets to corporate strategy. She has 20 years of experience across strategy and execution, cash and payments, and investments in London and Johannesburg (including Gartmore Investment Management, J.P. Morgan Chase and Barclays Africa/Absa).
Nana’s work ties her heart for doing good with her financial services expertise, in three advisory roles; as a vice chair on the Board of trustees of the Finance Innovation Lab with a mission to drive financial services access and justice in the UK; as a Non Executive Director at the Impact Investing Institute supporting impact investing in the UK and beyond; and as a non-exec supporter of the Women’s DNA fund investing in the missing middle to make sustainable SMEs more scalable and impactful in Ghana.