Florentina Daniela Gheorghe

Founder & Innovative Finance Consultant

2024 - Current

Senior Venture Architect

2023 - 2024

Unmarkets designs, builds & invests equity in high-impact, cashflow-positive joint ventures in emerging markets. I lead the new venture development process in a co-design approach with founders of established enterprises. We partner with well-established, family businesses to set up new Joint Ventures (JVs) in Kenya and India.The JVs are real-economy, industrial-scale businesses that target new markets and leverage the partner’s assets and capabilities. The new businesses are built to be cashflow positive and offer commercial returns and are optimised for impact. They benefit from JV partners’ assets, expertise and capabilities as well as their financial and human capital. We fund JVs with our own pool of capital that blends concessional donor money with commercial funds. For Unmarkets donor partners: we ensure their comparatively small investments leverage commercial capital into businesses that meet their specific impact outcomes. For Unmarkets commercial investors: we offer a market return + strong social impact + downside protection – along with the opportunity to invest into JVs co-owned by highly successful businesspeople with decades of experience operating in their sectors.

Global Program Manager: Acumen Angels & Knowledge Network

2021 - 2023

Managed the implementation and develop the systems for Acumen Angels - managed USD 2Mn grant facility and awarded 40+ early stage impact organizations in Acumen's alumni community in 2 years from six continents. • Developed and managed timeline and budget • Fine-tuned application form and assessment rubric for Stages 1 and 2 • Developed internal communications for launch • Built all documentation in Spanish Coordinated Execution across local teams on 4 continents • Coordinated with Community Team on marketing to The Foundry community • Acted as touch point for local teams on criteria on Stage 1 • Designed and coordinated global panel review - inclusive of compiling all submissions, evaluation materials, panel discussion, etc. • Disbursement Coordination – working with country directors and central legal and finance teams • Design and Coordinate “Angel Celebration” call. Overseen Affiliate teams • Worked with UK, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Spain teams on identifying and evaluating candidates

Co-Founder & CEO

2021 - 2022

hum is a platform that gives digital creators and digital brands the tools to drive more sales in emerging markets. With the massive digitization of small businesses in emerging markets and the booming creator economy, there is a 100 billion U.S. dollars opportunity to solve the digital sales challenge for millions of ecommerce businesses. In the last few years, millions of businesses are moving online with the help of Shopify-copy-cat models in emerging markets. “Great, so you now have an online store! Now what?” These businesses now face a new challenge: to find and convert customers online. The D2C market is reaching almost 100 billion U.S. dollars in India and African markets and yet the marketing challenge is real, frequent and burning for millions of rising brands.

Entrepreneur in Residence - Antler East Africa

2021 - 2022

Building the next big Global Tech Company from the ground up with the help of Antler. Antler selects the smartest, most passionate aspiring entrepreneurs, helps them find the right co-founder and connects them to a network of fitting business and academic domain experts worldwide. Antler provides funding from day one to support founders building businesses they will own and run, and that can positively impact local, national and global economies.

SME Finance Lead

2020 - 2021

Managed project team for supply & demand market gap analysis on SME financing in Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa – resulted in decision to plan MVP offering & bring financing in core strategy Uncovered key financing insights in interviews with 28 African SME founders & 15 fin-tech players Designed & led lean customer validation experiments to test value proposition hypotheses in the business model of AMI’s financial management app for hundreds of SMEs Developed 10 partnerships with fin-tech partners to finance SMEs w/ short-term working capital loans Managed team for MVP development of credit scorecards w/ alternative data

Management Consultant

2019 - 2020

Temporary Head of Partnership at AMBIO-N - a circular economy startup based in London, UK Planned & led 2 value proposition workshops for senior managers of an ed-tech start-up, Oxford, UK Co-developed US$50Mn investment case for donor strategy, developed market landscaping toolkits for leading international NGO client for fundraising consultancy from London, UK

MBA

2018 - 2019

Skoll Scholar @ 15 years celebration of Jeff Skoll's Scholarship (full tuition and living expenses sponsorship) Entrepreneurship Project: a digital platform for access to finance for SMEs using proven-replicable models in East Africa to increase exponentially the number of jobs they can provide • Skoll World Forum Invitee • Mars Catalyst Responsible Business Forum Speaker (Leadership for change) • Women in Business Speaker at Magdalen College, Oxford University • Oxford Summer Courses Business & Finance Judge

Business Consultant

2019 - 2019

Consulted a Brazilian micro-lending business and co-developed an impact measurement strategy.

Founder, Executive Director

2014 - 2018

Co-Founded for-profit education technology company to provide low-income families with in-school English language products and services at $10/year/child. • Planned and supported the design of 2 tech products: mobile-app for teachers, offline mini-server for schools • Led business development and achieved $13k in revenue in FY 17-18, serving 2500 students from grade 1 to 8 and 60 teachers across 10 schools • Fundraised $50k through international and national business competitions: NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum, D-Prize Award San Francisco, Global Ed-tech Startup Award • Hired a team of 7 ed-tech enthusiasts to achieve 2 business model pivots and grow from 300 to 2500 students in one year