Ola Brown is undoubtedly a driving force behind Africa's leading health tech and fintech startups. Her career reflects a deep-rooted optimism in the value of education, contributing to her remarkable success.

In her profile on Medium, Ola shares her experiences studying medicine and surgery at Hull York Medical School and working with various general and teaching hospitals across the United Kingdom.

Ola also earned a Japanese MEXT scholarship, a program established in 1954 by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to support students from around the world interested in studying at Japanese universities. Since its inception, over 102,000 students from 160 countries and regions have benefited from the MEXT scholarship.

After completing her studies, Ola spent about two years as a clinical research fellow in Japan before founding Flying Doctors Nigeria in 2011.

For over six years, she led this tech-enabled urgent care service, focusing on emergency services, virtual patient care, and medical equipment.

Before graduating, she founded Health Capital Africa, also known as Healthcap, in January 2020.

Healthcap invests in infrastructure and venture capital. Its infrastructure arm concentrates on healthcare, clean energy, and social infrastructure projects like clean water, with a focus on public-private partnerships.

The venture capital arm invests in pre-Series A startups in the fintech and health tech sectors.

According to Ola's LinkedIn profile, Healthcap has invested in approximately thirty startups in fintech and health tech and currently has a pipeline worth nearly $800 million in projects related to healthcare, clean energy, and clean water infrastructure across Africa.

She completed a Fixing Healthcare Delivery course at the University of Florida. She also attended a marketing course at the University of Cambridge in 2017 and studied economic policymaking at IE University that same year.

In 2018, she completed an accounting for decision-making course at the University of Michigan, followed by courses on financing and investing in infrastructure from Universitas Bocconi and Coursera, a project finance and public-private partnership professional certificate from the New York Institute of Finance, training in deals and strategy work from Wharton Executive Education, and a program on mergers and acquisitions from Imperial College London.

Ola's finance degree from the University of London focused on micro and macroeconomics, finance, capital markets, banking, banking regulation, and economic policy related to the International Monetary Fund.

According to her biography, she is also working toward a doctorate in finance. Her thesis will study the relationship between digital currency and monetary policy, integrating her expertise in fintech and economic policymaking.

She argued that companies in established economies often prioritize profits over their impact, while many African businesses focus on their effects at the expense of financial sustainability.

According to Ola, this has led to the rise of businesses that rely on grants rather than developing scalable, profitable models.

Ola emphasized that Africa needs large, profitable companies to create jobs, drive economic growth, and lift people out of poverty, thereby generating meaningful impact.

She made it clear that impact and financial returns are not mutually exclusive. The discussion underscored the necessity for a balanced approach that prioritizes both financial sustainability and meaningful impact.

Ola is married to David Brown, an entrepreneur, financial modeler, master trainer and instructional designer.