Wale Ayeni

Wale has an MBA from Dartmouth College, and his Bachelor's degree, with distinguished 'Red diploma,' from Moscow University. He is a recipient of the top global "100 Rising Stars" award in corporate venture. 

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Wale enjoys international travel. He has been to over 40 countries and speaks 4 languages fluently. In his free time he enjoys soccer, movies, cars, and mentoring.

Mr Ayeni Managing Partner at Helios Digital Ventures, a Series B+ VC fund focused on investing in early-growth stage companies with an African Nexus. He has over 18 years of global technology experience spanning several

roles. Prior to joining Helios, Mr Ayeni was at the International Finance

Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, where he

was head of direct venture capital investments across Africa, the Middle-East

and Central Asia. During his time at the organisation, he built its venture capital

investment practice in Africa and co-headed disruptive technologies and VC

investments for emerging and frontier markets globally, managing over $2.5Bn

of venture assets. 

Prior to joining the IFC, Mr Ayeni led venture capital investments in Silicon

Valley for Orange, the French telecoms company, focused on disruptive sectors

including Fintech, Big-Data, Mesh Networks, Blockchain, and Virtual Reality. He

started his career as a microprocessor design engineer with Intel Corp. and

later Qualcomm, before moving to JP Morgan’s Technology Investment

Banking group in San Francisco, where he closed more than $12Bn in executed

tech transactions.

He has served on the board of directors of several high growth tech companies

in Africa and served on advisory committees of early-stage VC funds Partech

Africa and TLcom. Mr Ayeni has an MBA from Dartmouth College, and a

Bachelor’s degree with distinguished “Red diploma” from Moscow University in

Russia. He is a Kauffman Venture Capital Fellow, a recipient of the top global

100 Rising Stars award in Corporate Venture, and serves on the Dartmouth Tuck

EMEA council.

As a member of Class 18, Wale served his fellowship at EchoVC Partners under the mentorship of partners Eghosa Omoigui and Amber Fowler.