Meet our Founder
Adjoa Adjei-Twum
Founder & CEO
Adjoa Adjei-Twum is Founder & CEO of Emerging Business Intelligence and Innovation (EBII) Group and an astute intellect in African Economic Development. She is a Financial Crime Compliance Expert with over a decade of international experience helping organisations meet their compliance requirements in the financial sector, With cross-cutting knowledge in both emerging and developed markets, especially in Anti-money laundering(AML) and Economic Sanctions.
Adjoa has worked in the AML, Sanctions and departments for a range of banks from Barclays and HSBC to UBS and Citi. Throughout her career, she has held various senior positions including Associate Director in Financial Crime Compliance at Exiger Ltd, Compliance Manager at HSBC Bank and as Head of Global Training and Communications for Chief Controls Office (CCO) at Barclays Bank Plc, to name a few. She has been promoted and re-hired by several banks due to her outstanding knowledge and expertise in AML, counter-terrorist financing, financial crime, sanctions and anti-bribery and corruption and has won awards for her valuable contribution.
Some of her work included conducting investigations into sanction breaches and circumventions, using her thorough knowledge of internal policy and regulations to make risk-based decisions on whether a sanction has been breached or not. In terms of AML, Adjoa has investigated suspicious activities for intermediary banks, liaising with both remitting banks and beneficiary banks to understand the nature of the transactions being made. Adjoa has also conducted in-depth due diligence with discreet and confidential inquiries and has led reviews projects on high-risk clients, including some high profile cases. Most notably, Adjoa was part of the Global Investigations Team where she headed the Panama Papers Project – a high profile and intricate investigation linked to investigating the exposure of the offshore finance industry across various lines of business at Barclays and provided solutions to ensure the bank had sufficient controls in place to mitigate any such risk in the future. She subsequently reviewed the AML and KYC controls within Barclays and provided solutions in order to mitigate the risks of tax evasion, money laundering and sanction breaches, which were implemented via policy changes.
In 2011 as Assistant Manager at KPMG UK, she instituted and led an innovative project that tracked current financial crime regulations, shared the knowledge and escalated the changes and its impact to the wider firm and clients. Her leadership grew the Forensic Team and she went on to lead the Forensic Team within the UK and India on the initiative. In that same year, on her secondment to Barclays, Adjoa fostered a deeper client relationship between KPMG and Barclays through weekly regulatory updates and implications for the sanctions department. This resulted in higher work output for KPMG from Barclays.
Board Members

Leanne Sorby
Company Secretary

Jeremy Tabiri
Non Executive Director, Strategy and Business Development
Decades of experience in the African Financial Markets spanning over a decade. Currently holding the position of Director, Africa Trading in Societe Generale CIB based in London. He joined Societe Generale from Standard Chartered Bank, where he grew the West Africa Trading franchise by developing the Ghana, as well as the WAEMU (XOF) and CEMAC (XAF) fixed income trading desks, as a Director for FX, Rates and Credit Trading. His current role covers Foreign Exchange, Bonds and Interest Rate Derivatives across various Countries within the Continent. Jeremy holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Ghana as well as a certificate from the ACI Financial Market Association.

Emilie Syed
Board Observer. Investment Associate at Oxford University Innovation
Engaged in the creation as well as the development of many early stage companies, evaluating businesses for growth and potential investment at Oxford University Innovation. Directly manages a portfolio of 18 companies, sitting on 5 boards, and build relationships within the surrounding venture capital eco-system, providing deal flow on one hand and investment on the other.
Specialists

Wahida Khan
Director, Financial Crime Compliance
Wahida is a qualified chartered accountant who specialises in financial crime compliance with over 13 years expereince working at KPMG forensic London and Dubai. During her time at KPMG she conducted fraud and anti-bribery & corruption investigations and compliance reviews across a range of sectors including energy, consumer markets and financial services. During her time in the Middle East, Wahida worked as a consultant advising on fraud and bribery and corruption risk. Her most recent role was working with the UK ’s Financial Conduct Authority in their investigations team.

David Ocansey
Director, Business Ethics
David Ocansey is leadership expert with over 25 years experience equipping large organisations across Africa and in the USA in the area of Business Ethics, Strategy, Management, Leadership etc. David is also a mentor to the John Maxwell leadership team. He is a teaching pastor at Believers Temple of Praise New Jersey.

Nwamaka Ogbonna
African Development and Policy

Catherine Spence
Innovation Support, Oxford University
Cath studied Physics at Durham University before taking a graduate role at STC, a large telecoms business, working on the design and development of early commercial fibre optic based telecoms systems. She returned to Durham to complete an MSc in Microelectronics before heading back south to work for Analog Devices in Newbury working on custom ASIC design.
In 1991 she joined Cadence Design Systems first as an application engineer, progressing to the business consulting group, working with an international portfolio of clients in the use of complex modelling in the design of electronic circuits.
Cath joined Oxford University Innovation in January 2017 as a Senior Technology Transfer Manager.