Alumni profile: Alberta Asafo-Asamoah

Alberta Asafo-Asamoah (Full-Time MBA 2021): inspiring entrepreneur, aspiring social impact investor and Women of the Future Awards MBA Star joint winner!

As an outgoing MBA student from the Business School, Alberta has already demonstrated outstanding leadership skills with her hard work earning her the Dean’s Impact Scholarship Award, as well as the Edie Hunt Inspiration Award, the best business pitch idea at Imperial’s Pitch ‘n’ Mix and also admission into the Black Valley accelerator programme.

We spoke to Alberta about her time at the Business School, her creative initiatives to tackling social problems and her commitment to helping SMEs achieve scale.

My time at Imperial

During my time at the Business School, I was an active volunteer, holding various leadership positions such as the Vice President of ImperialMBAWomen, a student-led club that seeks to bring together women across all Imperial’s MBA programmes and to celebrate their initiatives.

I was honoured to be the first European co-award recipient of the Edie Hunt Inspiration Award - a global award organised by the Forté Foundation celebrating the contribution that an individual has made to her school or community to advance women into business leadership positions.

I was also the Employer Relations’ Director for Africa Business Club and my goal was to help facilitate the club’s mission to connect Imperial talent to Africa-based opportunities, promote BAME talent within Imperial and beyond, and create industry specific content to bring BAME businesses and professionals into mainstream focus. I was able to form relationships with businesses and represent the Club on panels such as Imperial’s Employer forum to discuss how companies can build stronger relationships with Imperial student clubs.

By supporting emerging social impact enterprises and young entrepreneurs, I hope to open up opportunities for them and empower them to achieve their potential.

My current role and responsibility

I have spent a majority of my career in corporate banking, building relationships with businesses with turnover of ￡50m+ in the UK and providing debt finance to aid in their growth. After over four years in banking, I decided to combine my passion for social development and finance by pursuing a career in entrepreneurship and impact investing.

During this transitional phase, I founded AlgebraInTheCity (“AITC”) in 2018, an educational tuition and consulting business, to help bridge the educational attainment gap. I realised that there was a disparity in the curriculum used in selective schools, which encouraged problem-solving, in comparison to lower-income districts, which took a linear approach.

Since inception, I have developed my own method of teaching for young students between the ages of 9 and 16, many who have successfully secured entrance into competitive schools and obtained excellent results. 

My hope is to develop AITC by creating free educational content online, with free maths instructional videos for students aged between 11 and 16, which focus on the KS3 and KS4 GCSE curriculum in the United Kingdom, the WAEC syllabus across the West African countries and SAT/SSAT/ACT for schools that use the U.S curriculum. I also want to further explore my entrepreneurial goals by digitising AITC and making 11+ and selective exam resources available on the platform which I hope to launch shortly.

Through AITC’s community outreach programme, I have been involved in managing the operations of two charities called ‘Little Cherubs Kids Club’ and ‘Fantastic Learning’. It has been a privilege to support their tremendous growth, as well as develop the programme syllabi and lead on sourcing funding for the business. 

The future

My vision is to lead social impact projects in London and across Africa. To this end, I have successfully secured a role as a Senior Investment Analyst for a new gender equity fund managed by a global venture capital fund. I will be a consultant for the firm, working to support over 100 women-led enterprises in Africa on their mission to create social, environmental and economic impact by sourcing and evaluating investments for their business. 

Separately, over the past year, I have also been working on developing a tech-focused fashion e-commerce platform for the African market. After recognising the gaps in the fashion ecosystem, namely lack of access to variety and quality brands across the continent, the limited financial support for emerging brands to grow and other infrastructure problems, I saw a need for a fashion and beauty platform tailored to the needs of local consumers. 

My ultimate goal is to support local brands, promote sustainable shopping habits and in the long term, expand the business model to incorporate grant and microfinance products for designers. By supporting emerging social impact enterprises and young entrepreneurs, I hope to open up opportunities for them and empower them to achieve their potential.