Overview

Gender

female

Investor Type

Investment Partner

Barbara Iyayi is an experienced growth equity investor and entrepreneur with over 16 years’ experience in financial services, spanning venture capital, private equity, investment banking and technology. Barbara has founded, invested in, scaled and advised fintech-enabled and financial services companies globally. She is the CEO & Founding Partner of Unicorn Growth Capital, which is launching a financial innovation fund to invest in a synergistic and diversified portfolio of high-growth fintech-enabled companies providing critical components of financial infrastructure across the financial services stack. Unicorn Growth Capital aims to catalyze financial innovation to drive financial services across mobile payment-based digital economies.

Barbara is currently focused on venture capital and growth equity investments. She is the Chair of the Board of Appzone, a FinTech SAAS platform that automates banking services and enables the delivery of digital financial services in Africa. She is an Advisor and was formerly the Chief Growth Officer and Managing Director for Africa of Element, Inc - a pioneer of mobile deep learning (AI) operating in NYC, Africa and Southeast Asia and co-founded by Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Facebook and Turing Award Laureate; she scaled Element's AI-powered digital identity software (Enterprise Software) into Africa, partnering with financial service providers and payment companies.

Previously, Barbara was part of the founding team of Atlas Mara, an LSE listed financial services platform co-founded by Bob Diamond, ex-CEO of Barclays Bank, which was the first ever entity to raise over $1bn to invest in, operate and manage financial institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. As the Regional Head for M&A & Investments, Barbara led acquisitions and investments in banks in 7 countries in Africa. She also led and pioneered the banking platform’s FinTech strategy and partnerships.

Prior to Atlas Mara, Barbara worked on global transactions of over $15bn at various financial institutions, including as Vice President, Investment Banking at JPMorgan, New York, where amongst other transactions, she led IPOs for Delphi Automative and Nord Anglia Education.