Our Team
Management Team
Sheka Forna – Founder & Chairman
Sheka has over 20 years experience in sales and marketing in both the UK (for Carlton and ITV) and Sierra Leone (with Sierra Leone Airlines). He left Carlton in 2004 to found Regal Exchange, providing business training and support services to clients in emerging markets. He brings a rich Sierra Leonean heritage and very strong local network. Sheka has a BA in Business Studies from the Polytechnic of Central London.
Daniel Osei-Antwi – CEO & MD
Daniel has 8 years of experience across the technology and financial services sectors. He previously worked with Manocap, the private equity investor behind Splash, and quickly became a strong believer in the exciting potential for mobile money across Africa. Before moving to Sierra Leone, Daniel was an investment banker with Barclays Capital in New York, where he worked on M&A, restructuring and large debt and equity transactions for power and energy sector clients. Earlier in his career, he gained extensive start-up experience as an engineer with Nexant, a venture-backed leading provider of energy technology solutions and advisory services in the USA. Daniel holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Union College (NY) and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Shane O’Connor – CTO & Deputy MD
Shane has over 13 years experience as an IT professional across many sectors. He has worked with Splash Mobile Money since August 2009 and was part of the team that brought Splash to its market launch. Prior to joining Splash, Shane set up and ran his own successful IT consulting firm in London, with clients mainly drawn from the Banking and Retail sectors. Specializing in IT infrastructure consulting and and the provision of Managed Services to clients. Shane has an honors degree in Economics and Applied Mathematical Science and a postgraduate in Software Design and Development.
Advisory Board
Nick Hughes
Before taking on his current role as Managing Partner of Signalpoint Partners, Nick was the Head of Global Payments at Vodafone, where he started M-PESA, the world’s largest mobile money transfer service (with more than 10 million users in Kenya.) Nick initiated the M-PESA concept in 2004 and grew the business unit into a multi-million euro P&L deploying M-PESA in multiple markets. Earlier, Nick set up an innovation fund within Vodafone to target opportunities in mobile services. He holds a PhD In Applied Science, and has an MBA with distinction from London Business School.
Denis O’Brien
Denis is Chairman of the privately-owned Digicel Group, one of the fastest growing mobile operators in the world. Denis founded Digicel in 2001 when the company launched a GSM phone service in the Caribbean. Digicel operates in 32 markets with over 11 million subscribers in the Caribbean, Central America and Pacific regions. He is one of Ireland’s leading entrepreneurs with extensive investments across several sectors including international telecoms, radio, media, property and aircraft leasing. He also founded Communicorp Group which owns and manages a portfolio of media and broadcasting-related companies in Ireland and eight other European countries
Pankaj Gulati
Pankaj is the CEO and Chairman of Moremagic Solutions, a global leader of mobile commerce and mobile financial services based in Boson, MA. MoreMagics global network already includes over 120 mobile operators in more than 60 countries and over 150,000 retail distribution agents worldwide.Previously, Pankaj was the Director of Wireless Intelligent Network Applications at Lucent Technologies. With Lucent, Pankaj deployed Network Care and Customer Care solutions for Sprint PCS, AT&T, Alltel, US Cellular, Cingular, Telefonica, and Telecom Italia.