Hema Vallabh

Hema Vallabh is a founding partner at Five35 Ventures, a pan-African female-focused VC fund that invests in early-stage (Seed & Series A) tech startups solving the most meaningful challenges in Africa. Hema is also the co-founder and CEO of WomHub, a boutique pan-African incubator for female founders in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Manufacturing).

Prior to their current roles, Hema served as a limited partner at Dazzle Angels and as a co-founder at WomEng, where they spent 16 years helping to grow the organisation into one of the leading networks for women engineers in Africa. Hema has also been an advisory board member for African Leadership Academy SEP and a fellow of the African Leadership Network.

Hema began their career as a senior process engineer at Sasol, where they spent 10 months before moving to Sasol O&S in Germany for a year. Hema then returned to South Africa to start their own business, The Passionate Professional, which provided career coaching and mentorship for young professionals. Hema later became the program director for the School of Mentorship at IDM Business School before finally arriving at their current role at Five35 Ventures.