Nour Sana Kapadia

In this episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Anita Ramachandran, Executive Director of MicroMentor at Mercy Corps. MicroMentor, the world's leading online community for free business mentoring, reaching nearly 200 countries worldwide is an online community of entrepreneurs and small businesses with virtual mentoring. Anita is an entrepreneur, problem-solver, and changemaker, passionate about mentoring and personal growth.

In our conversation we cover her personal and professional journey of growth, leadership and belonging. By diving into some of the nooks and crannies of her beautiful, meandering life she highlights how she has grown, values she holds close and what it means to her to be her whole-hearted whole self.

Show notes


Books she is reading: 1) Finding your own North Star by Martha Beck, 2) Talk like TED by Carmine Gallo
Favourite quotes: " Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.- Joel Barker", AND "“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself- Rumi"

Delighted to launch the 1st episode of Season 3 of the Nour Podcast, welcome back!



Our theme this season is identity and belonging. Kicking the season off, is a deep and beautiful conversation with Dr. Khetsiwe Dlamini, a local, regional, and global gender specialist. She is the Executive Director and Founder at Triple C Advisory, an African-originated and women-owned global gender lens and impact advisory services firm. Her background in development finance runs deep with previous roles as Chief of Staff at UN Women, Principal Operations Officer at the IFC and World Bank for more than 15 years.



Work-Related highlights


Triple C Advisory


JEDI Investing Principles in Action guides

Favourite quote: "Everything is possible. Impossible just takes a little longer" by Wendy Ackerman



Books she is reading


I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
Professional Troublemaker by Luvvie Ajayi Jones

In this last episode of Season 2 of the Nour podcast, under the theme of Courage, I have an incredible conversation with the inspirational, generous and extraordinary, Carey Bohjanen. She is Founder and CEO of The Rallying Cry. Carey operates at the interface between finance, business and society to build more inclusive, equitable and sustainable economies. She drives transformational change, leveraging collective wisdom and untapped potential of people and capital. Carey connects leaders to purpose and passion to develop catalytic, forward-looking responses to our planet’s greatest challenges.

In this beautiful conversation, Carey shares her journey and the times in life her inner voice has guided her, and how she has come to understand that one version of courage is the deepest connection to purpose and that sweet spot of heart, heart and gut alignment. We also talk about the incredible work that Carey does at the intersection of gender and climate finance, and how her innovative organisation and team at the Rallying Cry are at the forefront of catalysing new leadership and investment approaches to scale private sector climate and gender solutions in Africa. We unpack how to unlock more gender-smart climate finance and the systemic shifts needed for sustained change.

As Carey says " Complex problems require complex solutions, and while its messy, murky and muddy, we have to overcome the fear to build bridges, connect the dots, and act with dignity and respect for everyone". This is also collective courage, and against the backdrop of our biggest societal challenges and climate change, " there is no time for no courage right now ".



Show Notes


Quote from Marianne Williamson " Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us"
Another quote " May your choices reflect your hopes not your fears" by Nelson Mandela
Book she is reading: Everyday Ubuntu: Living better together, the African way by Mungi Nagomance
More on the organisation that Carey runs at the gender and climate finance nexus in Africa: The Rallying Cry

In this episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Simba Marekera, Head of Investment Management at Brightlight Group and a long-standing advocate and active community member in the gender finance field.

This beautiful conversation dives into place, belonging, and how courage can also mean using your privilege, and speaking up for those who can't be in the room. We speak about the reframes needed in economics, finance and the power of ancestral wisdom, as well as the role of more proximate knowledge in investment decision making. We also discuss privilege and the role of men in gender-smart investing.

Simba Marekera is the Head of Investment Management at Brightlight Group, an impact investing fund manager dedicated to investing with the goal of transforming lives. He specialises in innovative financing and blended finance across a variety of Private Markets asset classes including infrastructure, real estate and credit/private debt both in developed and developing markets. Simba is active an philanthropist and social entrepreneur focused on empowerment of beneficiaries. He co-founded New Africa Foundation (www.newafrica.foundation) a charitable organisation that empower African communities through targeted philanthropy and investments in education, healthcare and entrepreneurship. He is also a co-Founder of EdFin (www.edfin.com.au), a fintech company that is a pioneer in providing affordable and responsible international education financing in Australia and Ignition Impact (www.ignitionimpact.com), an Angel Network that invests in high growth and high social impact African SMEs.



Show Notes


What Simba is reading: Wayfinding Leadership: Groundbreaking Wisdom for Developing Leaders by Dr Chellie Spiller, Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr, John Panoho
Words he holds close are from the Book of Michael in the Bible " Seek justice, love mercy and walk humbly to your God"
Example of a community-driven infrastructure debt strategy that Simba has led. Te Puna Hapori is grounded in indigenous principles, co-creating with the community and embeds a gender and broader inclusion lens into the financing strategy

This is the first episode of Season 2, where we build off Season 1's theme of Leadership, and dive further into the topic of Courage. What follows are very interesting discussions on how we even define courage, whether certain actions are about courage or stubbornness, and what it takes to fill up the tank to show up courageously.

In this delightful first episode, the incredible Lisa Witter and I have a lush and deep dialogue on how she perceives what courage is and isn't, and how she has created her path in life and work. Lisa Witter is a serial political and policy entrepreneur. She’s the co-founder of ⁠Apolitical⁠, a global peer-to-peer learning platform for public servants and the CEO of the ⁠Apolitical Foundation⁠. She’s a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. She is a former public servant with deep experience in gender and behavioral science and has founded numerous political leadership incubators over the last 25 years. We dive into examples in the political sphere that Lisa is immersed in, and speak about intersections with the broader gender equality space. I appreciate Lisa's candour in the examples she shares as well as the different life moments that have shaped her.

Show notes


What she is reading: i) The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind and ii) Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life
Songs on her playlist: i) Like sugar by Chaka Khan and ii) Joy and pain
Her social handles: Twitter (@lisamwitter), LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/lwitter/
Her podcast 'Apolitical Hope'

In this episode of the Nour Podcast, I talk to a female leader in the gender-smart and broader impact community whom I deeply admire and look up to: Kanini Mutooni , who is Managing Director at Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. I love so many things about this episode- from the deep human sharing, to the leadership insights and how Kanini and her team are deploying impactful capital on the African continent. We also meander into identity and belonging (#spoiler alert-future season!), and how knowing one's full self allows us to show up in our full "Nour" aka light and radiance.

As a member of the Foundation’s senior leadership team, she plays a lead role in sourcing new investments, deploying capital and helps execute the Foundation’s strategy and goals, while contributing to its thought leadership and external outreach for the African continent from the DRK office in Nairobi. She was was previously MD for Toniic, the global action network for impact investors, is an active Board member for a number of organisations, and has worked at the Board level in leadership positions at investment banks in London and the US, such as Bank of America-Merrill Lynch and Dresdner Kleinwort Benson.




Favourite quote "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams" by Eleanor Roosevelt.
What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce Perry & Oprah Winfrey and ii) The Devil You Know: Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry by Gwen Adshead and Eileen Horne
Listening to For my Hand by Burna Boy featuring Ed Sheeran