My Official Profile: Dr Ola Brown (Orekunrin)

5 min readFeb 13, 2018

MBBS, MSc (Finance/Economic Policy), Phd(c) Finance (Focused on monetary policy and digital currency)

A brief summary of Dr Ola Brown’s (nee Orekunrin’s) education, work and mission

Dr Ola Brown is the founding partner of Healthcare Capital Africa also known as ‘Healthcap’; a pan-Africa investment company focused investments that create a healthier world.

There are two arms to our business our infrastructure investing arm that focuses on healthcare/clean energy & social infrastructure and our venture capital arm that invests in pre Series A start ups in fintech and healthtech.

Healthcap has invested in nearly 30 start ups in fintech and healthtech. On the infrastructure side Healthcap has a pipeline of almost $800m in healthcare, clean energy and clean water projects across the continent.

She previously founded a tech enabled urgent care services marketplace called Flying Doctors Nigeria which has provided services in over 100 countries and has responded to over 5000 urgent care requests.

Academic Background

Degrees: Dr Ola studied medicine and surgery at the Hull York Medical School after which she worked in Acute Medicine in the UK. She then went on to be awarded the Japanese MEXT scholarship which allowed her to further her studies in Tokyo, Japan, the fellowship focused on lab-based research with induced pluripotent stem cells.

She also holds a Masters degree in Finance and Economic Policy (Major) from the University of London (Modules included: Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Financial Markets, Capital Markets, Banking, Banking regulation & IMF/Economic policy).

She is currently working towards her Phd in Finance, her thesis topic is studying the relationship between digital currency and monetary policy bringing together her existing expertise in fintech and economic policy-making.

Executive Education: In terms of executive education, her post-graduate areas of study include Finance (specifically infrastructure) , Pre-hospital Emergency care, Healthcare leadership , Healthcare delivery, and Economics/Economic Policy.

She has a certificate in Public-Private Partnership from Harvard University, a Project Finance and the Public Private Partnership Professional Certificate from the New York Institute of Finance, a certificate in Business execution and strategy from Wharton, Economic policy making from IE business school, Spain , a certificate in Accounting for decision making from the University of Michigan in the United States and a certificate in Finance & Investing in Infrastructure (Project Finance) from Universita Bocconi in Milan.

Teaching: She currently teaches economics and finance at the School of politics, policy and governance in Nigeria.

The online courses she has created include the following:

Project finance/PPP and infrastructure foundation (Introduction, Case studies, legal agreements and risks, PPP, financial modeling for project finance, conclusion)
Macroeconomics and finance
Microeconomics and banking
Banking and capital markets
Understanding the IMF
Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Central Bank Digital Currencies and the future of money
The Angel Investing and Venture Capital Academy for founders and investors.
Bank regulation and banking crises
Corporate governance and sitting on boards

Career in investment and finance

Along with two other directors, Dr Ola co-founded and runs leading a early stage venture capital firm, Greentree investment company which provides growth capital to some of Africa’s most exciting tech start-up’s.

Greentree Investment company has invested in start-up’s in various sectors mainly fintech, but also media, SaaS, Agri-tech, manufacturing, ecommerce, health tech and Edutech making it one of West Africa’s leading venture capital firms. In 2020, we exited our investment in Paystack when it was acquired by Stripe. Since then we have had a second exit in the fintech space.

Healthcap is a sector specific company that makes VC and PE investments in healthcare. Healthcap also invests in and operates larger healthcare/clean energy/clean water infrastructure projects.

Publications: Books & Articles

She has published four books ‘EMQ’s in Paediatrics’, ‘Pre-Hospital Care for Africa’ , ‘Fixing Healthcare in Nigeria; a guide to public healthcare policy and Banking, Finance & Economics in Emerging Markets: an essay collection.

She co-authored the ‘Impact investing for healthcare financing report’ alongside Stears business and authored the’ Project financing and healthcare infrastructure’ report.

She has also written articles in the British Medical Journal, the Journal of Emergency Medical Services, the Niger Delta Medical Journal, the New York Times and the Huffington Post.

Awards, Speaker Engagements and Appointments

She is an international speaker who has spoken at the TED global conference, the European Union, the Swiss Economic Forum, the UN, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organisation, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge University and the Aspen Ideas Festival. Dr Ola and her work have been featured by CNN,the BBC, Forbes and Al-Jazeera.

She has also received multiple awards and nominations. These include the Mouldbreaker’s Award, the THIS Day Award, The Future Award as entrepreneur of the year, New Generation Leader for Africa, Ladybrille Personality of the month, Silverbird entrepreneurship award, the Most Influential Person of African descent (MIPAD) recognition, Nigerian Aviation personality of the year award and Vanguard WOW Awards. She is also a TED fellow (see TEDx talk here), a Dangote Fellow, an Aspen Fellow and has been honored by the world economic forum as a Young Global Leader.

She is a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians, international editor of the Journal of Emergency Services and a LinkedIn top ten global Healthcare Writer.

In 2022, she received a national award conferring her as a Member of of the Federal Republic by the President of Nigeria.

International Trade & Investment/Policy Roles

Dr Ola Brown (Orekunrin) sits on the board of the professional women's network (Lagos Chapter). She leads the Health as a business group at the Nigerian Economics Summit Group (NESG); a think tank. She also facilitates trade between Nigeria, the United States and the UK through her seats on the committee of the British Business Group (Lagos)and as Chairperson of the Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce, Healthcare Business Forum. She is also on the exco of Women in Finance Nigeria.