Thanks to her rich experience, she was given the opportunity to be an International TEDxALC Speaker in April 2019 where she addressed the importance of engaging in a process of decolonisation of the mind. She is also a firm believer that knowledge is no longer concentrated in the West and that Africa and Asia hold immense potential for young African minds.

After coming back to her home country, one of the first things that struck her was how political literacy was very low among the Youth in Mauritius, therefore leading to numerous forms of social inequalities. Drawn to the idea of bringing an innovative solution to this societal issue, she co-founded LPEAJ (La Politique Expliquée Aux Jeunes) in August 2019 – an independent and apolitical online platform that aims at educating the youth about the cogwheels of the Mauritian Political System along with Civic Engagement.

In September 2019, Johanne Rannoojee was awarded the People’s of Choice Award 2019 in Mauritius by the Southern Africa Startup Awards 2019.

Johanne currently occupies the position of President of the LEO Club Omega of Residence Barkly, a youth-based service club under the Lions Club International (LCI). She has been actively involved in community development in her area from a very early age and has set up several community-based projects centred around environmental protection, youth development & Educational Support. Rannoojee is a volunteer at the Centre of Learning, Barkly where she teaches English and Ballet twice a week.

After working with several NGOs in Mauritius, she now works in the field of PR & Communications.

On the 26th of September, her Start-up, Panda & Wolf officially launched Eco-warriors™, the first Edutainment & eco-conscious Mobile Game to be supported by UNESCO in the Indian Ocean and across Africa. Through its various phases, Eco-warriors™ aims at educating children aged 6-12 about Ecological practices such as Waste Sorting while learning about the environmental, cultural and Historical legacies in Mauritius, Rodrigues, Reunion and Madagascar.

Prior to founding VERDE, Venna spent her career in investments, especially focused on the launch, monitoring and marketing of investment funds. Venna has worked for a number of years in major investment firms in the UK, which included Schroder Investments and UBS Global Asset Management.

She has over time acquired deep and holistic experience on modelling, data mining and analytics. She today has a proven track record in development of methodologies and in implementing growth strategies, overseeing strategic transactions and creating value for stakeholders.

Venna heads VERDE’s innovation-based initiatives, given her growth-focused vision, which leverages VERDE’s granular and proprietary data, technology assets, and advanced analytics.

Venna has also overseen large-scale strategic marketing engagements for clients, which included pricing strategy, demand assessment, marketing spend allocation and optimization, customer profitability improvement, corporate and brand repositioning, brand portfolio

optimization, sales force effectiveness, new product launch, and marketing capability building. Venna has worked with a wide variety of survey and syndicated data, internal and external databases, marketing research tools and methodologies, and marketing science models.

Venna received her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, Operational Research, Statistics and Economics at the University of Warwick in the UK.