Kanini Mutooni

Managing Director, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation

As a Managing Director of the Foundation, Kanini Mutooni plays a lead role in sourcing new investments and working with the leadership of those organisations, primarily in Europe, Africa, and India, as an operating partner and board member as they grow to build capacity and to achieve their maximum impact. As a member of the Foundation’s senior leadership team, she also helps execute the Foundation’s strategy and goals and contributes to its thought leadership and external outreach for the African continent from the DRK office in Nairobi. Kanini currently serves on the board of DRK grantees Baobab Circle, Brastorne Enterprises, Friendship Bench, Imagine Worldwide, Kwangu Kwako, People’s Pension Trust, VIA Global Health, and Vula Mobile.

Kanini Mutooni was previously MD for Toniic, the global action network for impact investors. Before this, Kanini was the Director for Investment at the USAID-funded East Africa Trade and Investment Hub, a $65M, 8 country initiative to attract investment and increase trade in the East Africa region. Kanini is a UK Chartered Accountant with a record of exceptional leadership gained in East Africa, Europe, and the United States. She is currently the immediate former Board Chair of The Global Innovation Fund, a $250M investment vehicle that has 4 of the G7 countries as permanent shareholders. She also serves as a Board member at MCE Social Capital, a US non-profit that uses a pioneering loan guarantee model for early-stage organisations in emerging economies. She has also recently been appointed as Board advisor for the United Nations Capital Development Fund, the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s 48 Least Developed countries.

Kanini 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. In 2014 she was recognised by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader for her exceptional leadership in business, the health sector, and global entrepreneurship. She continues to provide strategic advisory support to a number of Africa focused impact funds such as the $100m African Agriculture SME Fund and the $30M AHL Venture Fund, and the $175M Africa Food Security Fund. She is a visiting lecturer at the University of Capetown’s Bertha Center for Social Innovation.