Nichole Yembra is the Founder and Managing Partner of The Chrysalis Company which houses Chrysalis Capital, an investment management firm focused on early-stage tech companies in emerging markets. She served as the Chief Financial Officer at Venture Garden Group (VGG) and Managing Partner at GreenHouse Capital, the VGG investment arm until February 2019.

At VGG, she was responsible for investor relations and the financial strategy of the 7 technology companies under its umbrella as they served public and private clients across the aviation, power, education, financial services, and social investment sectors. At GreenHouse, she fostered the growth of their 14 portfolio companies at the forefront of using technology to solve real African problems. With Flutterwave, she had her first exit at 7.5x the initial investment.

She brings experience from working in private and Fortune 500 companies to identify, ideate, implement and invest in companies through seed and series stages building technology innovating around the bottom pillars of human needs: Food, Health, Utilities (water, air, shelter), Employment, and the money to pay for it all (Financial Inclusion). Nichole began her career at Ernst & Young LLP, Atlanta where she specialized in risk and process transformation across several sectors including oil and gas, consumer products, manufacturing, quick service restaurants, and financial services.

Nichole is a member of the Inaugural Obama Foundation Leaders: Africa Class and serves on the Council of 8 for the Shared Value Africa Initiative. She also serves as a mentor for Google Launchpad Africa and an Advisor to The Cortex Hub, a South African incubator. As a champion for women in leadership and technology, she founded the Garden Women’s Network which promotes the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in the Nigerian tech ecosystem and GreenHouse Lab which is Nigeria’s first female founder-focused tech accelerator and the first and only “Powered by Google” accelerator in Africa. In 2017, she was named by Forbes Africa as one of the Most Promising Entrepreneurs under 30. In 2018, Most Influential People of African Descent under 40 (MIPAD 100), a global civil society initiative whose efforts are in recognition of the UN-backed International Decade for People of African Descent, named Nichole amongst its 2018 honorees for business and entrepreneurship inside Africa.

Nichole also serves with Big Brothers/Big Sisters and was the Program Director for College MAP, a program providing underserved youth with tools to access university. She is an alumna of the Kenan Flagler Business School at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a graduate from the Masters in Accounting program at Wake Forest University, and a licensed CPA.