Michelle Essomé (Past Speaker)

Michelle Kathryn Essomé is Chief Executive Officer of the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCA) and brings 20 years of investment banking experience in marketing and origination roles in equities, fixed income, and investment management at Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers and Nomura. Ms. Essomé has an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School, where she was a Robert F. Toigo Foundation Fellow, and a BBA in Finance from Howard University where she was the recipient of scholarships including one from the Wall Street Journal. Ms. Essomé has completed an executive course in Private Equity and Venture Capital at Harvard Business School and is the inaugural recipient of the Columbia Business School Young Alumni of the Year Award (2014). In her role, she frequently represents the industry in the media and was recently profiled on Bloomberg TV’s “African Women to Watch.” She has worked in the United States, United Kingdom and France, lived in Niger and is fluent in French.