Charles Nana Kwarteng

Charles is a young potential African Leader with leadership experience from across three continents. He is Watson scholar, a 2019 MIT Water Innovation Prize winner, a 2019 AFDB Agripreneur, a 2018 Hult Prize Winner and a serial entrepreneur with investments in a couple of startups. He is an upbeat, self-motivated team player with excellent communication skills. For the past few years, He has worked in administrative, leadership and technical roles in both for-profit and nonprofit sector. His experience includes successfully establishing a relationship with people in Executive - level positions of both public and private institutions and developing viable opportunities. He has a track record of producing high-quality work and consistently launching successful ideas. He has a growth mindset and he is always ready to learn from others. Starting a business is notoriously hard. Building one that successfully balances profit and purpose is even more challenging! I believe in the power of purpose-led businesses to realize transformative change, globally. That’s why I support social entrepreneurs to build sustainable, scalable business models. I do this by: > employing design thinking to ensure their solutions are rooted in real needs > using rapid prototyping techniques to test, learn and iterate solutions > refining impact strategies and developing realistic, lean impact measurement systems > building connections between entrepreneurs, potential partners, and impact investors > supporting fundraising strategies and pitch deck development, spanning grant writing to crowdfund campaigns to raising impact investment > co-creating scaling strategies to grow profits and impact, sustainably Having co-founded and led a social venture that designs renewable energy solutions for people without access to reliable water and power for farming, I bring fresh experience of the journey from concept development to pilot to international product launch. I learned first hand the power of integrating design thinking and in-depth user research, which led me to initiate significant product and organizational pivots. To realize our innovative R&D activities, support our teams in both the U.S and Africa, and enable international product launches, I successfully raised funds through crowdfunding campaigns, grants and impact investing. Underpinning all our activities, collaboration with global corporations to local social enterprises was fundamental to our success. Through our work, we were able to mitigate water wastage in farming.