Bio:

“I’ve seen the good and the dark side of change. Anticipating change is a science, executing it authentically is an art form. The stories behind my greatest mistakes and the recovery process are the goldmine that I share with audiences and clients today.” Viola Llewellyn

Viola A. Llewellyn is a global business leader, award winning fintech innovator, and change strategist known for building and scaling capital solutions across Africa and international markets. Her career spans Fortune 100 technology companies, community & global financial institutions, and high-impact startups. She is known for her deep expertise in transforming teams into profit focused winners; her proven leadership strategies ensure that responses to change also lead to resilience and growth.

She is the Founder and CEO of PROPhaze Consulting™, where she advises corporations, investors, NGOs, and founders on leadership performance, revenue growth, and market entry in fast-changing global environments, with a strong focus on Africa’s high-growth sectors.

Previously, Viola was the award-winning co-founder of Ovamba Solutions, Inc., a U.S.-based alternative trade finance and fintech company. She successfully raised $3M in equity funding and led Ovamba to fund more than $123M in SME finance across multiple African countries. Under her leadership, the company created over 180 jobs, delivered consistent investor returns, and maintained a loan default rate below 5%, helping reshape access to capital for businesses and impact-focused investors.

Earlier in her career, Viola led enterprise sales at IBM, Wang, Sun Microsystems, and CACI, and later held senior leadership roles at Unisys Corporation, Rothschilds, and KPMG, managing large-scale private and public sector initiatives across Europe and the United States.

Viola is a World Economic Forum Tech Ambassador, TED Speaker, and award-winning keynote presenter. She has spoken at global forums such as Davos, Slush, and Money20/20. She is widely recognized for advancing African business leadership, financial inclusion, and raising investor confidence in frontier markets. Her insights have been featured in Vanity Fair, The Brookings Institution, The Wilson Center, and other publications and leading platforms. She is also a humorous story teller!

Born in the U.K. to Cameroonian parents, Viola lives in Maryland with her family. She is an unapologetic fan of Batman and Prince.

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Speaking Topics:

How to Effectively Engage Communities and Foster Inclusion

Your communities are made up of a myriad of potential customers from an unimaginable range of cultures and countries-of-origin. Is your financial institution doing all that it can to serve the populations of people who may not be readily visible to you?

Viola will offer fascinating insight on how some cultures view finances, including non-traditional borrowing and saving habits. She will also cover ways to evaluate creditworthiness of members of your community who may not have a standard credit history.

Viola’s background in African business financing and her knowledge of Sharia-compliant banking make her a wealth of knowledge on serving your community in a culturally inclusive way.

AI Lessons Learned from Emerging Markets

Africa represents a data analyst’s dream!  From medical, to genetics, to small business and culture, the exponential use of technology to solve local and global problems is creating new opportunities in data and innovation.  AI application in the sectors of trade, business, banking, and small business finance is creating an explosion in data analytics.  Innovating around these fast growing sectors has AI permanently switched  to the ‘ON’ position.

Credit unions can learn a great deal by observing what is going on in places like Africa, where AI and machine learning are growing by leaps and bounds. What steps can your credit union take to ensure you are setting your shop up for success?

Viola’s content includes:

• The importance of interpretability and how to move closer to understanding customer self-curation
• How to evolve into micro segmentation
• How AI can be used to level-set the playing field when data is coming from disparate – and often messy – places

If Business and Professional Lives were the Olympics: How to Stay Aware, Equipped, and Ready

If our business and professional lives were the Olympics, some might say Viola takes gold in the ‘lack of preparation, opportunity or even worthiness’ event.  I guess you could say most. Anyone who has felt a lack of confidence or suffered “imposter syndrome” in their careers can relate to that.  But what happens after all that you feared has happened and you are faced with 2 choices:

1. Scuttle back to what is safe and easy to succeed at hoping no one notices your failed attempts OR
2. Forge on, cap in hand, under the mantle of fear and guilt from failure hoping people will give you a second chance

WHICH ONE WOULD YOU CHOOSE?

Viola’s story is a blend of both but mainly what she learned navigating THE AMERICAN DREAM as an immigrant from the UK, and how the power of that dream played out both positively and negatively.  Hear her AMAZING ‘Aha moments’ that helped her build and traverse a bridge to a new version of authenticity and success.  She went from teenage pregnancy to a multi-million dollar FinTech builder with global recognition and accolades. She now bravely shares her story and the strategies she developed to build a better life.