Dr Ola Brown is the founding partner of Healthcap; a pan-Africa investment company focused investments that create a healthier world. There are two arms to our business our infrastructure investing arm that focuses on healthcare/clean energy & social infrastructure and our venture capital arm that invests in pre Series A start ups in fintech and healthtech.
Healthcap has invested in nearly 30 start ups in fintech and healthtech. On the infrastructure side Healthcap has a pipeline of almost $800m in healthcare, clean energy and clean water projects across the continent. She previously founded a tech enabled urgent care services marketplace called Flying Doctors Nigeria which has provided services in over 100 countries and has responded to over 5000 urgent care requests.
Academic Background
Degrees: Dr Ola studied medicine and surgery at the Hull York Medical School after which she worked in Acute Medicine in the UK. She then went on to be awarded the Japanese MEXT scholarship which allowed her to further her studies in Tokyo, Japan, the fellowship focused on lab-based research with induced pluripotent stem cells.
She also holds a Masters degree in Finance and Economic Policy (Major) from the University of London (Modules included: Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Financial Markets, Capital Markets, Banking, Banking regulation & IMF/Economic policy).
She is currently working towards her Phd in Finance, her thesis topic is studying the relationship between digital currency and monetary policy bringing together her existing expertise in fintech and economic policy-making.
Executive Education: In terms of executive education, her post-graduate areas of study include Finance (specifically infrastructure) , Pre-hospital Emergency care, Healthcare leadership , Healthcare delivery, and Economics/Economic Policy.
She has a certificate in Public-Private Partnership from Harvard University, a Project Finance and the Public Private Partnership Professional Certificate from the New York Institute of Finance, a certificate in Business execution and strategy from Wharton, Economic policy making from IE business school, Spain , a certificate in Accounting for decision making from the University of Michigan in the United States and a certificate in Finance & Investing in Infrastructure (Project Finance) from Universita Bocconi in Milan.
Teaching: She currently teaches economics and finance at the School of politics, policy and governance in Nigeria.
The online courses she has created include the following:
Project finance/PPP and infrastructure foundation (Introduction, Case studies, legal agreements and risks, PPP, financial modeling for project finance, conclusion)
Macroeconomics and finance
Microeconomics and banking
Banking and capital markets
Understanding the IMF
Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Central Bank Digital Currencies and the future of money
The Angel Investing and Venture Capital Academy for founders and investors.
Bank regulation and banking crises
Corporate governance and sitting on boards
Career in investment and finance
Along with two other directors, Dr Ola co-founded early stage venture capital firm, Greentree investment company in 2015 which provides growth capital to some of Africa’s most exciting tech start-up’s.
Greentree Investment company has invested in start-up’s in various sectors mainly fintech, but also media, SaaS, Agri-tech, manufacturing, ecommerce, health tech and Edutech making it one of West Africa’s leading venture capital firms. In 2020, we exited our investment in Paystack when it was acquired by Stripe.
