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Cheikh Oumar Seydi leads the foundation’s work in Africa. He joined the foundation in 2018 from the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), where he was IFC’s regional director for sub-Saharan Africa, based in Nairobi. In this role, Oumar managed IFC’s investment and advisory operations covering the region’s 49 countries.

Oumar has also served as IFC’s director for eastern and southern Africa and as its global director of Human Resources, covering more than 100 offices around the world. He originally joined IFC in 1997 as an investment officer focused on oil, gas, mining, and agribusiness development.

Prior to IFC, Oumar was a manager at Ernst & Young in New York, where he advised corporate clients on restructuring, reorganization, corporate finance, and business valuation. He also spent five years with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and began his career working for a variety of private banks and commercial auditing firms in Senegal and Belgium.

Oumar earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in Boston. He was born and raised in Senegal.