Africa Funded's activities have grown and the organization is currently expanding its team.
A recent top-level addition to the Africa Funded team is Christiaan Quellhorst, who has in depth and practical knowledge based on many years of corporate experience. Christiaan Quellhorst comes with over 25 years of experience in running international organizations, served at the director level at various multinationals and was the former Vice President of Canon Netherlands responsible for the service and operational part of the company. He strengthens the team in providing advice and act as sparring partner to entrepreneurs in the field of services, business strategy and operational excellence. He is chairman of the board for the Association of Services Management International Netherlands (AFSMI) and organizes service innovation conferences, research and workshops.
Saskia Reus-Makkink, founder of Africa Funded, shares: “Christiaan provides valuable insights and experience to our entrepreneurs. We see service and pay-per-use models coming up providing access to assets that base of the pyramid consumers could not afford before. Christiaan is a great sparring partner. We see a combination of a commercial visionary plus operational and finance expert as very powerful to support companies from a start-up to scale stage. We are happy to have him as part of the team!”..
Another valuable addition to the Africa Funded team is Miguel Heilbron. With multiple years of experience in Africa’s startup investment spaces he is keen to highlight the progress made by innovative African startups. Miguel Heilbron has over 15 years of experience in sustainability, social innovation and international development issues in projects in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas, and his experience in incubation and acceleration of startups and social initiatives is very diverse. Saskia Reus-Makkink adds: “Miguel is a great addition for the team in engaging entrepreneurs and stakeholders in our work. He is passionate about improving the entrepreneur ecosystem in developing countries and has an eye for identifying the hidden value in a story of the entrepreneur”.
Business development expert Saskia Reus-Makkink founded Africa Funded to support innovative entrepreneurs to develop, validate and scale their business models. With 15 years of corporate strategy experience, she has been providing feedback on business plans to more than 250 innovative and disruptive entrepreneurs in Africa across all sectors.
Africa Funded is currently working with a large poule of experts to provide customized support to entrepreneurs, supporting them to fine-tune and validate their business models.
New additions to the Africa Funded team will still be announced. See the team page on our website to get to know the whole Africa Funded team.