Melanie Smuts - Founder & Board Chair
Melanie trained as a human rights lawyer and has been passionate about new approaches to South African education since university where she devoted her free time to being involved in, directing, and founding a number of education non-profits. In 2011 she moved to India to work as a curriculum developer, teacher, and teacher trainer in a school in Uttar Pradesh, India. Inspired by the experience, she founded Streetlight Schools in 2013, starting in a small store-room with nothing but a few of her own childhood books.
Melanie received her BA and LLB from the University of Cape Town and her LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa) from the University of Pretoria.
David Fu - Cofounder
David Fu is an entrepreneur and product manager relentlessly focused on empowering others through education.
He currently serves as a Senior Product Manager for the African Leadership Group, empowering thousands of young Africans with software engineering and other digital skills and connecting them with dignified employment opportunities.
For Streetlight, he previously served as CEO 2018-2020, COO/CFO 2017-2018 and advisor 2014-2017. Prior to that, led expansion for US education startup incubator 4.0 Schools, and worked as an investment banker for Barclays Capital.
On the side, he coaches and invests in entrepreneurs, changemakers and creatives. He has also played piano for over 25 years.
Tatenda Nyamuda
Tatenda is an Investment Associate at D. Capital, the investment arm of Dalberg Global Development Advisors. She has worked with global banks, micro lenders, and insurance companies.
Prior to joining Dalberg, Tatenda was a manager in Deloitte & Touche’s Financial Institutions Services Team practice. At Deloitte, Tatenda focused on South African tier one banks, providing them with credit risk advisory services, including analysis of advanced credit risk modeling and regulatory reporting as required by the South African Reserve Bank and Basel regulations.
Tatenda is a registered Chartered Accountant with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants. She holds a Bachelor of Business Science degree with second class honors, with a concentration on Accounting and Finance and a Postgraduate Diploma in Accounting from the University of Cape Town. Tatenda is currently completing the research component of her Master of Commerce degree, with a concentration in Finance, through the University of the Witwatersrand. She will be commencing her MBA at Oxford University in September 2017.
Alim Ladha
Alim was an Associate Principal at McKinsey & Company as a leader of the Middle East Education and Organisation practices, serving public and private education clients across the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. He is passionate about innovation in education and was recently the Founding CEO and currently a Senior Adviser to African Leadership University.
Alim began his professional career as an Electrical Engineer, graduating from the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and has an MBA from INSEAD. Alim is an advisor and board chairman to The Design Institute. He brings his wealth of experience at McKinsey and his successes driving change and innovation in education.
He currently is the Founding CEO of Instill Education, a company that aims to transform teaching and school leadership across the African continent by training teachers and developing school leadership programs.
Mieke Krynauw
Mieke is a researcher in the Office of the Deputy President in Pretoria. Previously, Mieke was a Senior Associate in the Corporate Department specializing in M&A (both private and public), general corporate law, commercial mediation and acting as settlement counsel at Bowman Gilfillan Africa Group.
Mieke has previously lectured jurisprudence at Wits Law School and has experience in constitutional law, having clerked for the late Justice Skweyiya during his tenure on the bench at the South African Constitutional Court.
Mieke is a trustee on the Black Sash Trust and has a number of pro bono clients to whom she provides corporate advice. Although she has never realized her dream of being on a national sports team, she is proud to be a panelist on SAFAAE’s Disciplinary Committee. She holds a Master of Laws (LLM) from Stern, New York University School of Law.
Dudu Makhari
Lois Moodley
Hatim Eltayeb
Since 2016, Hatim has served as Dean of the Academy at African Leadership Academy (ALA). ALA seeks to identify, develop and connect the next generation of African leaders. Each year, ALA’s flagship diploma program enrolls 130 of the continent’s most promising young-people, preparing them for lives of ethical and effective leadership. In his role, Hatim leads a team of staff and faculty to translate ALA’s mission into the daily work of building a learning, innovating and leading school community.
Prior to ALA, Hatim co-founded Symposium, an education services organization based in Cairo, Egypt. Hatim holds a BA in Government from Harvard University and an MA in School Leadership from Teachers College at Columbia University.