Elizabeth Ngonzi is an award-winning international leader leveraging her distinguished 20+ year career to enable social impact leaders and entrepreneurs to increase their impact and reach their potential. Through her firm Liz Ngonzi Transforms, she provides consulting, executive coaching and speaking services based on her ICAT Framework, which is designed to Inspire, Connect with and Activate clients to help them create the Transformation they seek in their organizations and/or professional / personal lives.
During her career, she has overseen the turnaround of a Nelson Mandela-endorsed international nonprofit organization; founded and run an international boutique consulting firm; excelled in various corporate roles; been an invited member of the U.S. Speaker Program at the U.S. Department of State; taught and guest lectured at top academic institutions in the U.S. and abroad; and delivered training that has transformed lives and organizations worldwide.
An international public speaker and trainer, she covers digital innovations facilitating social impact, entrepreneurship, leadership, personal branding, philanthropy and storytelling. Venues have included the Bank of New York Mellon; Candid; Cornell Black Alumni Association Reunion Weekend; entrepreneurship@cornell; Harvard Africa Business Conference; International Fundraising Congress; McCann Worldgroup The Truth About Africa Report Launch; McGraw-Hill Financial Women’s Initiative for Networking and Success (WINS); SXSW; TEDxCornellU; UNICEF; Vital Voices Global Partnerships; WeWork; and the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Ms. Ngonzi teaches women entrepreneurs and nonprofit founders on their venture creation journey through the Bank of America Institute for Women’s Entrepreneurship Online Certificate Program at Cornell. At The Center for Global Affairs at New York University, she teaches nonprofit leaders how to use digital storytelling and platforms to more effectively raise funds and engage stakeholders. As an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Cornell University, Ms. Ngonzi helped budding entrepreneurs identify and demonstrate their unique value propositions to prospective funders.
Until 2018, Ms. Ngonzi served as the turnaround CEO of Afrika Tikkun USA – one of only four Nelson Mandela-endorsed nonprofits worldwide – which she developed into an in-demand organization by drawing on her entrepreneurial approach to social impact, leveraging digital storytelling, diversifying fundraising, professionalizing operations and creating cross-sector partnerships.
She previously founded and spent 12 years leading an international boutique consulting firm that facilitated cross-sector partnerships, conceptualized and re-branded fundraising events, and developed digital marketing campaigns. Her firm’s clients included AMREF Health USA; Communities in Schools of New Jersey; Cornell University Office of Diversity Alumni Programs and School of Hotel Administration; National Eating Disorders Association; the North Jersey Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure; United Nations; and United Nations Development Programme.
Ms. Ngonzi has served as Communications Chair of the invitation-only President’s Council of Cornell Women; a member of the Advisory Board to the Cornell Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship; and a member of the Cornell MOSAIC Board.
She is a 2019 cohort member of the “Most Influential People of African Descent” (MIPAD 100); was a 2017 recipient of the African Diaspora Awards “Advocate of the Year” Award; was featured in 2016 by WeWork’s Creator Magazine as one of its “40 Over 40” leaders; and was recognized by BRANDfog as one of the “25 Smartest Women on Twitter 2015”.
She has been quoted in or featured by Black Enterprise Magazine, CCTV America, CNBC, Crain’s NY Business, Forbes Woman, MarketWatch, NPR, South Africa Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) News, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The NonProfit Times and The Washington Post, among others.
Ms. Ngonzi earned a Master of Management in Hospitality degree (Services Marketing concentration) from Cornell University School of Hotel Administration; a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Systems from Syracuse University iSchool; and a High School Diploma from the United Nations International School, which she attended for primary and secondary school.