Rarebirds

Proudly Moroccan, The foundation of my education and understanding is built on a unique Geopolitical and Societal diploma completed in the early stages of my growth. This prepared me for an approach not only with a business mind but with a political understanding too. I have grown from financial consultancy experience, language expertise and a large amount of political work to a strong passion in the world of Technology. With my Oxford University Blockchain Strategy Knowledge of the Blockchain Ecosystem/
Innovations in Value Transfer/Decentralized Apps and Smart Contracts/Transforming Enterprise Business Modules and the Blockchain Frontiers as well as my vast understanding and experience in the political and financial arena - my approach to the development of this new technology is unique given my established networks and full stack strategy. I am driven by the desire to succeed and make a difference in all I do - that said, I intend to actively be a part of supporting the education and development.

Tarek is bringing value to business through blockchain technology.  He is the Founder of K2LIS, A Paris based company that supports customers from all sectors to anticipate, innovate and deliver high value through innovative projects based on Blockchain technologies. They bring an end-to-end state-of-the-art Blockchain expertise: - Acculturation and training for Business and IT people - Strategy and consulting to identify appropriate and high-value use cases - Solutions development and deployment support.

Sebastian Vidal is the Chief Innovation Officer at the Puerto Rico Science, Technology & Innovation Trust.  He is the former Executive Director of Parallel18 an international Startup Program based in Puerto Rico where they support and invest in 80 global companies per year with the goal of having an economic and social impact in the island. After the first year, the program has been able to generate 5 times return the distributed investment.

Before this, Mr. Vidal led government funded program Start-Up Chile, aiming to attract global minded entrepreneurs to his native Chile in order to transform the country in to a world-recognized innovation capital. Through Start-Up Chile, he was able to work side by side with more than 1,000 startups in different stages and industries, managing a 10 USD Million yearly budget and witness a country’s cultural transformation towards entrepreneurship, guiding the program in to become the most innovative company of Latin America according to FastCompany in 2015.

He has also helped develop technology ecosystem public policy strategies in countries like Peru, Brazil, Malaysia and South Korea, and consulted the World Bank for a technology development ecosystem project in Lebanon. He has invested in some startups and also has been a mentor in different accelerators and entrepreneurship programs such as Stanford Ignite, Founder Institute and others.

Digital Economy Advocate Economist|Professional Speaker| Blockchain Consultant/ Educator| Youth Mentor
Dedicated to serve and impact and author. 

Ohemaa Adjei Andoh is an optimistic person who aims to achieve the best results in every thing she does. She believes in Team work and motivating others to bring out the best in them. Ohemaa Andoh believes everyone has a light in them that needs to illuminate the path for generations after them.

During her undergraduate study in Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) studying BSc. Geological Engineering, she served as the Women's Commissioner and Women in Engineering president for the College of Engineering.

She has six(6) years experience in the Oil and Gas Industry as a Cementing and Stimulations Engineer and worked in offshore operations in Ghana and Nigeria and supported projects in Ivory Coast, Senegal and Mauritania. She believes Engineering is less of the use of the hands and more of the use of the mind in solving problems in the society.

Ohemaa Andoh is passionate about encouraging and inspiring young girls to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and this fuelled her to start Girls in Science and Technology (GIST), an organisation that encourages young females and empowers them by showing them representation of Ghanaian women in STEM careers and sharing their journey and growth with them amongst other things.

Ohemaa Andoh continues to empower herself to be able to empower others.
GIST was awarded the Outstanding Women Social Community Award at the Ghana Outstanding Women Awards (GOWA 2020) and Ohemaa Andoh was nominated as an Outstanding Woman in Innovation at the same awards that year.

Her greatest achievement is being a mother to two amazing children.

Ohemaa Andoh's mantra is "Let you light shine from within."

Ecosystem Lead at cLabs, Chairwoman of United Africa Blockchain Association, Founder Essence Crypto Consultants as well as United Africa Women in Blockchain and Ethereum Foundation Devcon Alumni.

Ms Soko is one of the very few African women to be fully involved in the Blockchain and cryptocurrencies and was awarded 2019 Devcon V Queen by attaining top learner status at the 2019 Devcon through the Ethereum Devcon Scholarship program.

She took up interest in Blockchain technology since 2016 and has worked as a freelance Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Consultant for an online investment firm.  With the help of her qualification as a training facilitator and assessor, she has been able to create a number of YouTube tutorials and has currently completed a Blockchain and Cryptocurrency learner guide for beginners.  She is currently an ICO advisor for a number of projects.

With a background in Finance and Administration, Ms Yaliwe Soko has served as a Financial Administrator and Operations Manager for reputable companies such as Oando Trading Limited a subsidiary of Oando PLC, Kuluvuyo Consultancy and Wellness as well as Blandford Africa and has sound knowledge of the oil and gas industry as well as corporate governance and corporate policies.

Blockchain is full stack developer with a great enthusiasm for learning and adopting new technologies. Her work relies on building rich responsive web apps & Dapps. She is the Founder of Arabs in Blockchain,

Benjamin is a fan of computer design and programming. He has been a motion graphics designer for a long time and currently working on his project; Beautiful Africa, which comprises the African Geek.

Jennifer is the Managing Partner of ATO Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm based in Puerto Rico that funds technology startups in USA and LATAM, with special focus in PR. She has been building companies and investing in startups as a Limited Partner (LP), Venture Partner, Angel and Venture Capitalist (VC) for over 20 years.

Jennifer began investing in the capital markets at age 19, while an undergrad at Oxford University. She became an LP in an early stage Venture Capital fund at age 23. Several years later, Jennifer become a Venture Partner with Outsell, and then an active startup Advisor and Angel Investor. She founded ATO Ventures in 2018. The fund had its first close in 2019 and will do a final close in 2020. ATO Ventures is currently deploying capital while also completing its raise.

As an entrepreneur, Jennifer started her first company at age 8, but she officially became a tax-paying citizen at age 10. (You can read more about that at https://Hopp.vc). After college, she was a testifying & consulting Commercial Damages Expert before returning to her passion - entrepreneurship! She founded her software company, WeMakeItSafer, shortly after attending business school at UC Berkeley. After launching in 2011, the company was acquired in 2016.

Along the way, Jennifer also held two interim CEO roles and has been advising startups on identifying revenue models and the importance of validating markets before launch. Now, Jennifer is using her expertise to help other investors achieve higher returns at lower risk through ATO Ventures.

Jennifer began visiting Puerto Rico as an Parallel 18 mentor in 2016 and quickly fell in love with the island. She is now happy to call San Juan home and is fully committed to supporting and growing the quickly emerging startup ecosystem in PR.

The best place to connect with Jennifer is on instagram: http://instagram.com/Hopp.vc

Experienced Co-Founder with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Skilled in Oracle Database, Management, LaTeX, HTML, and Cartography. Strong business development professional with a Online Data Science Training focused in Data Science from Udemy.

Pretty’s management consulting focus across a decade ushered her into an industry disruption through the co-founding of Coronet Blockchain - an emerging technology solution geared to shift how hair exchanges hands across Africa's ZAR 100 billion per year sector.

A responsibility that sees her reshaping the future of this sector through blockchain driven supply chain digital infrastructure inputs leveraging blockchain technology to evolve the salon sector from hand to mouth into a bankable economy. Future-proofing the salon sector, in a post-Covid reality, ensuring their sustainability, re-tooling, and bring about employable key industry skills whilst fulfilling consumer expectations.

A dynamic, flexible and results oriented product development, operations professional & entrepreneur. Collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders and learning about the needs of new sectors from scratch to bring innovative ideas and business success.  Have worked on a number of product launches in the US, Europe and Middle East.  Spent two years spent in Paris working at Ledger.com helping to scale operations revenues from $10M to $90M.  Spent five years in Dubai on Product capacity at Careem, Starz Play, and Yahoo!.  All this has given me the ability to put on wider lenses when getting an idea off the ground. Addressing all types of issues from finance, HR, sales and marketing.   Have good speaking and understanding  of Arabic, French and German (elementary).

On leaving the Horn of Africa country after the war, gained degrees from the UK in BSc Economics & Social Policy and Post Graduate in Computing. His first technology job was with French online price comparison, Kelkoo.com. In 2004, it was acquired by Yahoo! for $650mn. At Yahoo!, he had the opportunity to work for one of the early Internet giants. 

During my 10 years at Yahoo! I have been involved in a wide array of product developments in London, California, and Dubai. In Dubai, I also worked for Careem which has wholly been acquired by Uber for $3.1bn. More recently in Paris for Ledger.com who provides security and management of digital currencies an exciting new arena. And now, I return to my roots with a Cars Marketplace project (Gawaarida.com) dedicated to Somalia... New time, new challenges but the same heart and energy to make a difference,”.

My name's Gustavo Diaz Skoff and I grew up in the Startup Ecosystem in Puerto Rico. At 18 years of age, I founded the first youth-led non-profit organization for aspiring entrepreneurs in Puerto Rico with the support of 3 Government agencies. During my time at the #1 School For Entrepreneurship (Babson College), I studied and produced the only non-government commissioned study of Act 20 & Act 22. At 24 years of age, I've built my fair share companies (crash & burned them), worked with a wide array of firm, led last-mile data gathering efforts with 78 mayors in Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria, and performed some incredible stuff.

Sonia John is  blockchain developer, writer and speaker.  She is passionate about the decentralized web and all the endless possibilities within it! She believes that it is not enough to know and be willing but to act.  She is currently working on Porium, a web3-focused distributed online learning platform.