An accomplished former Wall Street attorney, banking & financial services executive, Sharron has over 30 years of experience starting, building, and navigating businesses through competitive and complex regulatory environments. She possesses a diverse skill set and is recognized for having raised in excess of $US2 billion in direct foreign investment to fund infrastructure development primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa. She is one of the chief architects behind some of Africa’s most iconic women’s investment initiatives and funds including the Graça Machel Trust, the 2X Collaborative and the Africa 50 Fund. She is Co-Founder and former CEO of Africa’s largest women’s infrastructure investment group, Women in Infrastructure Development & Energy Pty Ltd (WINDE) – a consortium with over 2,000 women SME owners in infrastructure and the related sectors that has measurably and positively impacted the lives of over 1 million people.
Sharron is Co-Founder and former Executive Director of the Centre for Disruptive Technologies (CDT), an affiliate of the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business where she serves as a Senior Adjunct in Project Finance. She is member of the faculty of Singularity University where her focus is on advancing technologies for a climate resilient future. She is a Senior Non-Resident fellow of the Stimson Center, a bi-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. She has served as a strategic advisor on high impact resilience investing for a number of global corporations including the Shell Foundation, Chevron and Alexander Forbes. Her development finance and government advisory work includes the World Bank & IFC, the African Development Bank, the Development Finance Corporation and the governments of Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa. More recently she advised the United States Federal Government on the sustainable job creation aspects of the Inflation Reductions Act of 2022.
In 2023 she conceptualized the Green Jobs Machine, an AI-enabled climate resilience analytics platform that provides actionable insights and resilience investing frameworks to government, industry and community-based end users. Current collaborative partners for the Green Jobs Machine include the Luxembourg Institute of Science & Technology.
Sharron earned a Doctorate in Jurisprudence (Columbia University School of Law), Honours in International Trade & Finance (University of Toulon), Bachelor of Arts in Economics (The College of William & Mary), and Post-Doctoral Studies in Exponential Technologies (Singularity University).
She serves as a Non-Executive Director, as well as Strategic Advisor, to a number of publicly traded and private companies. She is a member of the South African Institute of Directors (IOD) and the National Association for Corporate Directors in the United States.
