OUR TEAM
Our team is comprised of individuals that are passionate about the mission and vision of Cycle Connect and who align with our values.
CYCLE CONNECT LEADERSHIP
Molly Burke
CEO | Co-Founder
Molly has led Cycle Connect from a start-up project to a fully operational enterprise. Under her leadership Cycle Connect has grown across two different cities in Northern Uganda, serving over 5,000 clients all of which is supported by a team of over 30 full-time staff. She led the organization to grow the portfolio of products, moving it from a lease-to-own bicycle distributor to that which serves multiple tools for farmers to pay back over time. Her passion is to push the boundaries of exploration and challenge what's possible to further unleash the potential of smallholder farmers in Uganda. This is why she led the establishment of Cycle Connect's innovations department to ensure that the organization continuously adapts.Molly's work with Cycle Connect led to achievements such as being a 2019 Social Entrepreneur member of the Miller Center's GSBI program, a 2015 SHONA fellow, and a National Geographic Traveler of the year.
Emmy Okema
Country Director
Emmy Okkema is the Country Director at Cycle Connect and responsible for driving the expansion and growth of the organization. She holds an M.A. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from VU University in Amsterdam. Emmy has lived in Uganda since 2013 with her husband and two boys. Before joining Cycle Connect, she worked for six years in leadership positions at companies focused on micro-entrepreneurship and start-up development. Her most recent position was General Manager at Expat Assist where she steered their strategic direction to accomplish the company’s operational goals and implemented lean operating procedures and structures to lead the company to profitability.
Julius Kigundu
Head of Finance
Kintu Aggrey Fred
Regional Manager
Fred is responsible for our team and portfolio management. He has nine years of experience in banking and microfinance. Before joining Cycle Connect, Fred worked at Opportunity Bank as branch manager from Jan 2013 to Sept 2017 with a demonstrated track record of successful business planning, leadership, agricultural business and risk analysis. He holds a B.A. from Makerere University in Community Psychology and a PGD in Agricultural Risk Finance and Management from Mountain of the Moon University. He is certified in credit management from The Uganda Institute of Banking and Financial Services.
Hope Okoronkwo
Head of Operations
With 12 years’ overall experience, Hope’s technology background in the US coupled with his social enterprise expertise in Africa provides him with an impressive skillset to help address the operational and systems needs at Cycle Connect. After earning his Master’s in Sustainable International Development where he completed a thesis on Ghana’s agricultural policies and rural smallholder farmers alongside an internship focused on agricultural policy at IFAD, Hope moved to Africa to work in social enterprise. He assisted a mobile payments startup in Zambia close a $3M Series A investment from US investors while growing its electronic platform’s loan transactions volume through the introduction of Service Level Agreements (SLAs). He also developed a soybean project targeting 7,000 rural women farmers in Ghana that generated support from USAID-FinGAP. In addition, he prepared a comprehensive business plan that proposed a 1,000 rural farmer input credit backed supply chain to help transform an emerging agribusiness in Uganda into an agro-processor and ready the enterprise for new capital.
David Resetar
Head of Innovations
David manages Cycle Connect’s new innovations team. His experience includes over ten years abroad, including four years in rural Ethiopia working with Nuru International on programs working with smallholder farmers on credit, training, and agribusiness solutions. His work at Nuru cut across different departments and gave him exposure into the different types of services and product offerings to enable smallholder farmers to reach their full potential. This experience, coupled with previous work in research and surveys, gives him a strong foundation to enable Cycle Connect to research and explore new process improvements and product offerings.
CYCLE CONNECT TEAM
JOIN OUR TEAM
Do you want to be a part of a dynamic team that is on a mission to create access and opportunity for those in the last mile? Check out Cycle Connect's career opportunities:
Career opportunities