Bio

Charmaine Hayden is a Fund manager at Goodsoil VC - Africa focused fund investing in early stage sustainable tech and tech enabled startups with phenomenal founders obsessed with building high performing solutions that impact the world for good Charmaine has a strong background in setting up cornerstone firms with a Diversity first lens. Prior to establishing Good Soil VC, a fund dedicated to investing in early-stage tech startups with high growth potential, Charmaine led an award winning internationally recognised agency. The agency focused on providing talent for globally recognised brands committed to increasing visual representation of minority groups. With a keen interest in providing a platform for underrepresented groups, Charmaine set out to create a technical support and networking community for UK based female entrepreneurs. This group focused on women between 18-25 who were keen to understand how they could set up a small business with limited resources and direct access to role models. It is with this focus Charmaine has been able to host mainstream tv and social media shows, focused on unconventional routes to success. With viewership between 100,000 per episode. It is Charmaine's unconventional personal and professional background which acts as her anchor when identifying opportunities which are often missed in identifying top tier start ups. She has Recognised by Forbes as one of the 25 Black business people to watch and Financial Times as one of 100 BAME leaders in tech. Charmaine is also a founding member of the UK-Ghana Investor Group (UKGIG) an integral aspect of the inter-ministerial UK-Ghana Business Council, with Baroness Hoey, the UK Prime Minister's Trade Envoy to Ghana, and Ghanas deputy finance minister Charles Adu Boahene amongst others The groups primary role, as a network of private enterprises and investors, will be to encourage private sector engagement in priority projects identified by the UK Ghana Business Council, with the ultimate goal of increasing the nation's inflow of FDI.