Lynette's Story

My Biography

Lynette Nabbosa works to advance racial equity and economic opportunities for young people. She is the Founder of Elimu, a community which connects underrepresented youth with role models to develop their entrepreneurship and employability skills. This is achieved through mentoring, training and sharing opportunities. She is also a Business Lecturer and a doctoral student, evaluating Elimu’s entrepreneurship education model to see if it produces more equitable outcomes for Black youth in the UK.

Lynette’s work has taken her to Senegal, where Ibrahima Cheikh Diong (UN Assistant Secretary General and Director-General of Africa Risk Capacity Group) introduced her as “The Future of Africa” at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation West Africa conference. She also received a scholarship to further develop the community empowerment element of Elimu’s model with Tostan in Thies, Senegal. Her work in Africa also includes a partnership between Elimu and Opportunity Tracker, providing young people across the continent with virtual mentorship from role models in the UK. Lynette also has a partnership with Enjuba, where her social enterprise Abaana gets more young people reading by donating story books to primary school children through a 1-for-1 sales model. 

Lynette became a social entrepreneur after being awarded the Muhammad Yunus scholarship, to study MSc Social Business and Microfinance. She went on to win the prize for Best Dissertation and was a winner of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education national writing competition. She also met the Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who was the Chancellor for her graduate school.

Prior to re-entering academia, Lynette had developed a career in financial inclusion. She fronted a London-wide test-and-learn project that incorporated nudging techniques into financial inclusion services. This project aimed to develop the financial capabilities of young social housing tenants and was delivered as a randomised control trial, which Lynette facilitated in alongside the UK Government’s Behavioural Insights Team. To evaluate this randomised control trial. 81% of residents engaged with Lynette’s service, compared to the 61% achieved by Financial Inclusion teams. This led to 16% fewer instances of rent arrears.

This project inspired Lynette’s first social enterprise, which was an app that provided young social housing tenants with a one-stop-shop for all their financial inclusion needs. Lynette received a Shackleton Leadership Award for this app and became a Fellow of the School for Social Entrepreneurs. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Associate of the Chartered Management Institute.

As a thought leader, Lynette has featured on podcasts, radio shows, websites and at conferences, where she shares her experiences and insights regarding racial equity and opportunity, corporate social responsibility and the Sustainable Development Goals. She recently added to her portfolio an evaluation that she is leading for a national charity to support them in becoming an anti-racist organisation. She is evaluating their organisational culture and service delivery to ultimately recommend tangible actions for better serving young people with intersectional identities. 

Lynette is also a school governor and a member of the Mayor of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm, which is working to make London’s public spaces, streets, memorials and buildings more representative of the city’s diverse population. She is also a judge on Enterprise Cube’s Striver programme and an interviewer for the School for Social Entrepreneurs Fellowship programme. 

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynette-nabbosa/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/_nabbosa 

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