Heather Henyon is Founding Partner of Mindshift Capital, a venture fund investing in early stage women-led technology companies. Heather has almost 20 years of experience in venture finance, entrepreneurship, emerging markets, angel investing, financial technology, credit and impact investment. With over 80 direct and fund investments, she is an active venture investor with a passion for fintech and women-led start-ups. She is a Founding Partner of Athena CFO, now known as Growth Partners, an outsourced CFO and finance advisory firm. Previously, she was Investment Director with Eureeca, a regulated global equity crowdinvesting fintech start-up, where she was responsible for curation, products, and investments. Heather founded Balthazar Capital, a social enterprise investment advisory firm for the Arab region in 2010. As the founding general manager of Grameen-Jameel Microfinance Ltd, a social business jointly owned by Grameen Foundation and Abdul Latif Jameel Group, she originated, structured and closed $44 million in leveraged commercial debt financing for micro-finance institutions in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. In 2013, Heather started the Women’s Angel Investor Network (WAIN), the first and largest women’s angel investment group in the Middle East, and served as Interim CFO for Little Thinking Minds, WAIN’s first investment. Heather started her career on Wall Street where she worked for Standard & Poor’s as a corporate bond ratings analyst in the capital goods and auto supplier sector. Past roles include project finance, 3G wireless analyst for Middle East & Africa and Vint Cerf’s internet architecture group at WorldCom. 

Heather has lived and worked in the UAE, Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine for 15 years, and she speaks Arabic and French. Heather is on the Investment Committee of Dubai Angel Investors and US-based Next Wave Impact Fund; cofounder of impact angel investor club Rhodium45; and advisor to CoFund, a Dutch micro-finance private equity fund. Heather serves on the Boards of Sarwa, the first licensed roboadvisor in the Middle East; Localized, an edtech future of work platform; NeedsList, a global humanitarian aid marketplace; and Little Thinking Minds. She is a mentor for start-up companies at Techstars Dubai, in5 Tech, Sheraa, Flat6Labs and the Dubai Technology Entrepreneurship Center (DTEC). She serves on the Advisory Council of BR Microcapital, Cornell University’s micro-finance fund; is a Board member of the Cornell Alumni Club GCC and past Co-Chair of the Johnson Middle East Alumni Club; served as the Middle East Advisor to Cornell’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Initiative; is founder and past Chair of the Dubai Microfinance Club. Heather serves on the Board of Directors and is Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee of the Sekem Holding Group in Egypt. Heather has been nominated as “Investor of the Year” by Arabian Business in 2016 and 2017. 

Heather holds an MBA in Finance & Entrepreneurship from the Johnson School at Cornell University, where she was a full-merit Park Leadership Fellow scholarship recipient, and a BA in Economics & Political Science from Oberlin College. Heather studied abroad at The American University in Cairo (AUC), where she was a Presidential Fellow. Heather lives in Dubai, UAE.