General Partners
Kristen Nwanyanwu, MD, MBA, MHS
General Partner
Dennis O’Connell
General Partner
Paul Williams
General Partner
Kyle is the Principal of Cay Insights LLC, a boutique consultancy. He brings high-level advisory and strategic experience across private, public, and social sectors in advanced and developing economies.
He began his career as a Foreign Service Officer for The Bahamas, then supported the investment and asset management teams at joined Cornèr Bank (Overseas) Limited in The Bahamas and Switzerland. At Baha Mar Limited, a US$3.5 billion mega-resort in The Bahamas, he developed market entry and growth initiatives, and led the project’s airlift and China strategies. He supported senior management and the Business Strategy & Analytics Team at Deltec Bank & Trust in the successful acquisition of a private bank. While at business school, he worked with Secha Capital, an impact-focused private equity fund in South Africa, and Informed Capital Management, a private equity fund focused on knowledge-intensive industries. Following graduation from Duke, he joined BNP Paribas CIB Consulting Strategy & Operations team leading strategic initiatives across the Americas. He brings sustainability expertise from his time as Lead ESG Strategy Analyst at Wincrest Capital, a Bahamas-based boutique asset manager.
Kyle received an MBA from Duke University – The Fuqua School of Business, and a B.A. in History and Chinese from Vassar College.
Akinwole “Aki” Garrett is an accomplished deal maker with over fifteen years of business development and management experience at the intersection of technology, media and telecommunications.
Aki is currently VP, Head of Business Development & M&A at REVOLT Media & TV, which was founded in 2013 by music and entertainment mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, as the leading multimedia company focused on HipHop culture. Prior to Lenovo, Aki was the Head of Global Strategic Telecommunications Alliances for Lenovo, one of the world’s leading original equipment manufacturers. Prior to Lenovo, Aki was the Founder and Managing Director of Accelerate Consulting, a boutique digital media and technology consulting firm that offered a variety of advisory services for strategic growth to companies between series A and series C funding rounds.
Prior to Accelerate, Aki spent three years as Senior Vice President of Business Development and Publisher Partnerships at SHE Media (formerly SheKnows Media), where he was a member of the senior management team that took SheKnows through an acquisition by Penske Media. Moreover, Aki has held business development management positions at both CBS Local and ABC News, where he was instrumental in creating new strategies and businesses for both companies.
In addition to SFV, Aki sits on a number of educational and venture capital investment boards. Aki holds an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and a BSBA in Finance & Accounting from The Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis.
Mr. Nwanyanwu is a compensation professional with subject matter expertise in executive and equity compensation. He brings nearly twenty years of experience as a consultant and working for publicly-traded companies. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania with a focus on Political Science, Philosophy, and Economics.
Dr. Nwanyanwu is a board-certified vitreoretinal surgeon and an NIH-funded health equity researcher. She graduated with highest-honors from the University of Michigan and graduated with a combined MD/MBA from the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School. She builds sustainable solutions to decrease health disparities in diabetic retinopathy in pursuit of her goal to decrease preventable blindness.
Paul Williams is the Head of Strategic Initiatives and Solutions for Amazon Business. Paul and his team are charged with procuring, evaluating, piloting and launching unique sub-vertical solutions for the $3.4B Commercial Sector of Amazon Business.
Prior to this role he served as East Region Sales Leader for Amazon Care responsible for driving growth across direct sales and channel partners. As Amazon Care sought to reimagine healthcare around the employee and employer, Paul and his team were tasked with collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to execute on the organization’s business plan to develop relationships and delight customers with solutions.
Prior to Amazon, he served as Director of Sales and Service for Americas East Large Group for Aetna International managing the client relationship team across U.S., Dubai and U.K. He was responsible for servicing and growing a $200M portfolio. Paul was responsible for developing the team’s strategy to maximize customer relationships through retention and revenue growth while executing on service responsibilities for the largest and most complex global clientele. The team managed Multi-national corporate customers, International financial institutions and International government contractors.
He has also served as National Sales Vice President for Aetna International’s Faith Based and Not for Profit vertical. Paul was responsible for building the product, services, go to market strategy and executing the sales efforts for international volunteers, missionaries and employees resulting in over 5,000 new members.
Paul’s tenure with Aetna spanned 18 years. His diverse experience included Middle Market Sales, Investor Relations, Enterprise Strategy as well as completing a year-long expatriate assignment in Aetna’s Hong Kong office as Sales Leader and Business Development lead, doubling their annual membership production. Paul also led the product and market strategy for the Government vertical for Aetna International.
Outside of work, Paul co-founded and actively leads an investment family office, Sankofa Family Ventures, LLC comprised of 12 families investing in diverse venture fund managers and fund managers with portfolios that focus on diverse companies.
Paul was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. He graduated from Wesleyan University with his B.A. in Economics and Duke University with an M.B.A. in Finance. He is married with one daughter and loves to spend any spare time traveling with his family.
Dennis O’Connell led technology vendor relations at Yahoo and Verizon Media server hardware strategy for the last 15 years. He was the Sr. Director of Yahoo’s Performance Engineering Team, which is in charge of exploring and on-boarding new technologies and server vendors, sponsoring proof of concepts around new tech and finding new areas of collaboration with current and future vendors.
Dennis’ team runs Yahoo’s benchmarking & certification lab and assists Yahoo’s business units to improve their applications’ latency, throughput and cost . Dennis grew up in Massachusetts and graduated at Northeastern University with a major in International Affairs.
Debon Lewis is a leader, coach, and entrepreneur whose work focuses on the intersections of emotional intelligence, leadership, and DE&I development. His experiences include founding schools, coaching leaders, developing teams, managing projects, facilitating workshops, and managing a tech start-up. Debon helps leaders to reimagine inclusive spaces that honor all identities allowing people to learn, grow, and thrive authentically. He brings experience in both technical and adaptive leadership and an unwavering focus on increasing diversity, inclusion, and belonging.
In 2014, he founded Transformative Growth Partners to broaden his impact by building up the capacity of leaders. Today TGP is a sector agnostic leadership development consultancy with a focus on coaching leaders across industries to develop their DE&I lens through improved emotional intelligence. Here he serves as an executive coach, facilitator, and leadership consultant. Previously, he was an award-winning middle school teacher, Academic Dean, Instructional Coach, and Principal. In each position, Debon led diverse teams to achieve transformative results by growing their practice and shifting their mindsets. In 2007, Debon was the founding Principal of Achievement First Bridgeport Academy Middle School which today ranks as the #2 charter middle school in the state of Connecticut. He is also Co-founder of AKALA, a Google-backed educational technology company in the college access space.
Debon earned a B.A. double majoring in Political Science and Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and later received a Master’s in Educational Leadership and Administration at National Louis University. Debon is proud husband to Tiffany and father to Kingsley August.
Lesley Horton Campbell is the General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Talent at ICSC, a trade association serving the retail real estate industry. She brings nearly 20 years of experience in the retail and commercial real estate sectors, having previously served as Associate General Counsel at Tiffany & Co., focusing on global real estate and corporate matters and as Assistant General Counsel at L&M Development Partners.
Lesley received her B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania, her J.D. from New York University School of Law, and she is an alumna of the Wharton School’s Advanced Management Program
Ali Campbell is an accounting professional with subject matter expertise in individual, non-profit and corporate income taxation. He brings over 20 years of accounting experience, having served at major NYC based accounting firms and as the sole proprietor of Campbell Tax Solutions LLC. Ali holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from Lehman College.
Tania is a mother, wife, investor, and corporate finance professional. She was born and raised in Mexico and moved to the Bay Area as a young adult. She has worked in supply chain and corporate finance for Fortune 500 corporations. After becoming a mother, she also got involved in the governance of local public schools.
Tania is a local community leader and an avid advocate for equity and inclusion in education, the workplace, and mental health. She firmly believes that fueling diverse representation in the entrepreneurial ecosystem will have ripple effects that will further equity and inclusion in all realms.
Wilson Muscadin is a finance professional with over 20 years of experience in personal finance, asset management, and commercial insurance. He began his career as a specialty commercial insurance underwriter with Chubb Insurance, specializing in Directors & Officers Liability, Employment Practice Liability and Fiduciary Liability insurance for public, private, and not-for-profit organizations. He was also the Director of Segment Management for Fidelity Investments developing strategic insights and providing marketing analytics for customer segmentation strategy for over 17M customers. Wilson is currently the Director of Business Development for EJDA Services, an accounting and small business consultancy firm.
Wilson graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University with a B.A. in Business Administration and from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business with an MBA.
Andrea currently is Head of Partnerships for Amazon in the Community’s philanthropic education initiatives. Previously, she served as Vice President of Partnerships at the Partnership for a Healthier America where she worked with former First Lady Michelle Obama and her Let’s Move! Initiative to develop and implement private sector commitments — guiding $124 Million in funding to food, physical activity and other community programs.
Over the course of her 20+ year career, Andrea has also served as a global health management consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, where she negotiated lower pricing of HIV/AIDS treatments and diabetes medicines on behalf of low-income countries. Earlier in her career, Andrea provided biomedical research services to hedge fund and private equity clients before leaving Wall Street to launch a social entrepreneurship NGO in South Africa. Andrea holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and her Bachelors in Biology from the University of Virginia.