Since we established the Brink Foundation two and a half years ago, we've been searching for someone who can bring a rare blend of cross-sector insight, deep roots in African innovation ecosystems, and the strategic clarity to help us continue to grow boldly.
So, we're very excited for you to meet the newest addition to our stellar non-executive board: Sheena Raikundalia (right).
Following a competitive search process with over 120 applicants, Sheena stood out as someone who can bring a rare combination of perspectives that span the government, corporate, donor, investor, and entrepreneur worlds.
Sheena brings over 18 years of experience spanning legal, financial services, and impact investment sectors across Europe and Africa, plus over seven years of board experience. Her unique insight comes from a career that’s taken her from London law firms to serving as Country Director of the UK-Kenya Tech Hub for the FCDO, to her current role as Chief Growth Officer at agri-tech company Kuza One. She also proudly describes herself as a ‘failed entrepreneur,’ an experience she says taught her more than all her other roles combined.
I first encountered Brink when I was Country Director for the UK-Kenya Tech Hub. I saw the impact of their programs in Kenya, and what really struck me was their distinctive way of working: entrepreneur-led, agile, deeply listening. Those were the things that resonated with me really strongly because I honestly believe that the people closest to the problem often hold the key to the solutions.
Generally, solutions are designed by people far, far away who talk at the community and society, rather than actually listening. That's what I really like about this agile, deeply listening approach, which is normally so hard to find.
I've always believed that entrepreneurship is the way to solve development challenges and that what we need to do is set the environment for enabling entrepreneurs to scale at scale. For me, that's the role of foundations, donors, governments, and investors: how can we help entrepreneurs? Because if we let entrepreneurs get on with it, every development challenge becomes a business opportunity. But those entrepreneurs can't do it on their own; they need support. That means capital of course, but also talent, regulatory environment, networks, and most importantly, markets.
I think there are a lot of things, but it begins with the mindset of the stakeholder.
From a donor's perspective, it's nice to be the one solving the problem. When you have these ‘vanity metrics’ like ‘we trained a million people’, it makes you feel good. Even when we do charity and give something, we say "I don't want it to go on operations, it has to go directly to the people," and it makes us feel good. It's hard to change a system that makes you feel good.
The second barrier is this mindset that to help, we need to bring in all this expertise. Many programs say local teams need capacity building because they need to fill out complex theories of change and reports. But that's assuming the way the theory of change is designed is actually what the local skills need to be. Because you're the donor giving the money, you're dictating how it needs to be reported. Are you really building capacity, or are you just creating more work for the local partner?
The third issue is that we've been pushing global solutions and fitting them locally because of funding power and soft power. I'm a big believer in global AND local. Unfortunately, the narrative has been pushing global solutions, and you're able to do that because of funding and soft power. But that soft power is changing. Why Brink Foundation is exciting to me is because it comes with that understanding of global and local.
I was a lawyer for the first 10 years of my career. I've been a ‘failed entrepreneur’, I worked for a fund doing impact investing, I've done the donor role, and now I'm with Kuza. So I always think I'm an expert at nothing.
But what I realised is because I've had all these different positions, what I do have is that ability to listen and understand and communicate what people are trying to say. I worked on a program with corporates and startups, and what corporates were talking about in terms of scale was not what the startup was talking about. What the startup was talking about in terms of speed was not what the corporate had in mind at all.
Basically, there's a huge communication gap that’s made worse by jargon. But if we were able to communicate better and understand what each other were saying, I think a lot more could happen. The biggest issue with systems change not happening is because it's too siloed.
The way I get around silos is I don't think about labels and sectors. I just think: what's your problem? Can I help you in any way? If I can't, can I connect you with somebody that can? Just doing that is sometimes more important than anything, just breaking that siloed information asymmetry.
There's an Einstein quote I use all the time: not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. In our struggle to measure attribution, some of the good things that can't be attributed, like the connections you need to make or simply ‘hope’, get left behind.
If you want to change a system, you can't be bound by it. The solution may come from that system, but you have to start by changing your own mindset and questioning it. For me, the worst thing I can hear is "But we've always done it like that." I just ask dumb questions. I ask lots of those questions all the time, hoping that those questions will trigger something in somebody else.
Trust always starts with personal trust, but at some point, if that trust doesn't translate to beyond the personal, then it becomes problematic.
The UK-Kenya Tech Hub was my baby. It was so associated with me that everybody knew me as the ‘UK-Kenya Tech Hub’ person. When I left I knew that it was going to continue to be successful, tt had to not be based on my personality or the credibility that I brought to it. That's the same with every organisation or movement. It has to start with this personal, individual trust but it has to graduate out from there.
Community trust is amazing. Unfortunately, countries like those in Africa and Asia are defined as ‘low trust’ communities compared to somewhere like the UK. But actually, what we found is there is high trust in rural communities. Trust between networks, within women's groups, within Chamas. So it's very possible to cultivate that trust if you’re prepared to be genuinely open. If you say "This is my vision, this is what I want to do, does this resonate?" It starts with co-creating that shared vision, and then constantly delivering on it.
There's no shortcut to trust. There are certain things that make trust easier, but it builds over time and with continuity.
We need to have really honest discussions about this. Philanthropy should be catalytic, but is it really? The whole aim of philanthropic and donor funding should be working to do yourself out of a job.
When I was asked about my vision for the Foundation in the next 10 years, I said I hope it doesn't exist in the way it does now. That should really be our aim. The aim of philanthropy should not be for us to be around forever.
But it's very hard to expect people to write off their own jobs. It's very hard to expect people within a system to disrupt that system themselves.
In the corporate world, giants like Nokia and Kodak didn't see themselves being disrupted. It came from outside. What we're expecting is for the donor world to be catalytic and disrupt itself. Of course it can't, unless we're very intentional and say "We're going to shut down in five years."
Right now philanthropy is so focused on volume. We're saying “We've changed the lives of one million farmers… But by $2”. What difference is that going to make, versus changing the life of even 100,000 people, but by $100 or $1,000. That’s real change because then they can be empowered to make the next change themselves.
I think simplicity scales. Given that funding is changing, there are things we can actually do...
Firstly, we keep talking about green climate, but we could be shifting manufacturing to places with renewable energy. Kenya, for example, is 93% renewable. We could set up manufacturing plants using renewable energy. Or take cocoa: farmers grow it, but all the processing happens in the West. Bring that capability to Africa. Use philanthropy and impact investing to grow the market - become the first investors in these things.
As donors, let’s focus on markets and regulation that will open up markets, so Africa can trade within itself. Right now, Africa loses $5 billion in foreign currency trade every year; and yet we have a system called Papss which allows for local currency transfer.
In terms of capital, the international financial system is skewed against Africa. It pays the most interest rates, it's all in dollars, so currency fluctuations hit us hardest. So why not set up local currency, low-interest funds? Create low-interest loans that need to be repaid, so you get a revolving fund, but more importantly, you're building a credit history so people can graduate to banks and private capital.
That's truly catalytic, but nobody wants to do that because it's boring, it's not sexy, it's hard work. There are no vanity metrics there!
Firstly, I see the foundation's role as convening, having these hard conversations, and (maybe most crucially) being that conduit for listening. I think if more philanthropic organisations were able to listen then we’d see so much more genuine collaboration and breaking down of those silos we were talking about.
Number two is being bold on experimenting and failing. There's such big risk around experimenting and failing, but foundations could play a really good role in showing by example what works and what doesn't.
And number three is about leveraging what already exists. There’s this temptation to always be doing something new, but maybe we need to do more of seeing what's already out there and thinking about how we can make it work.
Break silos, be bold, convene people, and build on what exists. I think that’s a great ambition.
Read more about Brink Foundation and our other board members here.
