Yvonne Mburu is a scientist and consultant with more than 10 years of experience in Immunology and Oncology. She is also the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Med In Africa, a social enterprise dedicated to connecting the global community of African scientists and health professionals. Med In Africa offers a global platform for African professionals to transfer knowledge and collaborate across regions, sectors and disciplines with other professionals all over the world.
Yvonne, a native of Kenya, was born and brought up in Nairobi where she attended primary and high school. Upon graduating high school at the top of her class, she moved to Canada on a partial scholarship to pursue her undergraduate studies in Biology and Chemistry at York University, where she eventually graduated with highest honors.
Among the awards, she received during her time at York was the Carey Risman Memorial Award, an honor bestowed to the best student in the combined degree program.
She then moved to the United States for her doctoral studies in Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh where she studied the mechanisms underlying cancer progression and metastasis in head and neck cancers.
Upon completion of her doctoral studies, Yvonne won the inaugural Lloyd J. Old Memorial Award and a CRI-Irvington Fellowship from the Cancer Research Institute to undertake her post-doctoral research at the Curie Institute in Paris on the immunotherapy of cancer.
Over her scientific career, Yvonne has been passionate about the immune system and its dysfunction in diseases such as cancer. Her African roots then led her to launch Med In Africa and explore the implications of digital technologies in harnessing the skills of African professionals abroad. Her vision is to build connections linking the vast skills of the African diaspora to the continent itself and to exploit this human and financial capital to accelerate the outcomes of sustainable development on the continent.
Yvonne is a 2017 Africa France Young Leader of the AfricaFrance Foundation and an UNLEASH Global Innovator for being among the world’s best talent working on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. She is also among the 100 most influential Africans in 2017 of the magazine New African.
She is a member of the Presidential Council for Africa for the French President Emmanuel Macron, a consultative body that works towards the transformation of the relationship between France and Africa and the strengthening of links between the civil societies of these regions.
We are proud of her achievement and we name her Most Influential 100 Class of 2018 Business and Entrepreneurship category.
