Irfan Keshavjee

Business adviser, Business mentor, Consultant, Entrepreneur, Social entrepreneur

Irfan is an accomplished entrepreneur, business advisor, non-executive director, and executive coach, with 26 years of corporate experience as a CEO in Eastern Africa. He is the founder of two award-winning impact enterprises for which he was awarded the prestigious Ashoka and Acumen Fund Fellowships. • He has two decades of expertise leading high performing businesses across a breadth of sectors, building and nurturing talented teams, raising capital, implementing tactical operational systems, and guiding businesses through disruptive competitive, regulatory, and macroeconomic environments, and periods of social unrest. • Irfan is extensively networked with a proven reputation and track record in the East African corporate ecosystem, and has a deep practical understanding of the local culture, navigating relationships with various stakeholders including regulatory and government bodies, civil society organisations, the business community, and consumer demographics. • He has sectoral expertise across a multitude of sectors with over a decade in each the following: - Board Advisor for a publicly listed bank and several fast-growth SaaS companies - Agricultural value chain: small-scale farmer to consumer, Kenya, Tanzania & South Sudan - Real estate: affordable housing ecosystem - conception, development, sales, community management, Kenya - Multi-outlet commercial retail: rolled out over 45 retail service outlets across Kenya and Uganda - Start-up, scale-up and SME business & board advisory / turnaround / transformation - Digital transformation in the banking sector. - Have organized, curated and moderated 50 TEDx events over the past 15 years • Academic: B.SC.Eng. in Environmental Engineering from Queen's University, Canada 1994; Masters in Business (MBA) from University of Oxford 1998; Advanced Management Programme at University of Oxford (Colin Mayer Award Scholarship) 2008; MIT course in Digital Transformation 2023; Inner MBA course in Authentic Leadership 2024 • https://www.linkedin.com/in/irfan-keshavjee/

Social enterprise, start-ups, scale-ups, social justice, mindfulness, corporate governance, executive / leadership coaching, creating opportunity and choice at the bottom of the pyramid, affordable housing, inclusive agri-value chain, human dignity, shifting value add to the grassroots, energy healing, presence, self-awareness, mystical travel, exploring new ways of thinking - organized 50+ TEDx events!

Knowing what is "enough" is liberating. Money, like food, is a means and not an end in itself. Unbridled capitalism that puts shareholder value above social good is at the heart of so many social ills. If we could find a way to reward social-value-add in equal measure to shareholder value… where companies aim for a target return instead of supernormal profits… that would be an idea worth spreading.

Board Chair, Business Advisor, Leadership Coach, Non-Executive Director

I started holding TEDx events in 2009 at schools, universities and cinemas which became iconic events on Nairobi's intellectual scene... and we'll be holding our 50th TEDx event in April 2024 :) Why? We need to intelligently reassess our systems of governance, education, and cultural narratives, and creatively think about the roles of morality, technology, human behaviour and collaborative civil society in our world. This event creates a space for open, exploratory dialogue to understand these issues, to ensure the diversity of our peoples and their thoughts are a source of intelligent constructive creativity rather than conflict. I met Jacqueline Novogratz in Nairobi... she said something that made me realize even though we commonly measure poverty in terms of income, what's more important is poverty of choice, hope, opportunity, and I suppose ethics, morality and more... it's relevant at all levels of a society.

Energy Healing