In a rapidly shifting global landscape where inclusion, equity, and innovation are no longer optional but essential for progress, certain leaders stand out—not for the loudness of their voice, but for the depth of their conviction. Among them is Hema Vallabh, Founding Partner of Five35 Ventures & Co-founder at WomHub, a visionary ecosystem builder whose journey reflects resilience, purpose, and an unwavering belief in the power of women to transform societies. Her path from a young girl in South Africa to an engineer, social entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and mother is not simply a story of professional evolution, but a testament to inner strength and the profound possibility of systemic change.
This edition of The Most Impactful Leaders to Watch in 2026 delves into her remarkable trajectory, her leadership philosophy, and her mission to reshape the future of African innovation through intentional, gender-lens investing.
A Journey Shaped by Purpose, Pain, and Possibility
Hema’s story begins in a post-apartheid South Africa, in a culturally rich but disadvantaged community where humility was woven deeply into society, often overshadowing ambition. Raised by loving parents who instilled service, integrity, and sound values, she grew up excelling academically but with little confidence in her own voice—far removed from the global stages she would one day speak on. Her first turning point came through a scholarship to study Chemical Engineering at the University of Cape Town, a transformative opportunity that revealed how access can reshape entire life trajectories.
While pursuing engineering, she became acutely aware of the gender imbalance across the STEM pipeline. The scarcity of women inspired her to co-found WomEng, a volunteer initiative that evolved into a global nonprofit supporting girls and women in engineering. Her work as an engineer, both locally and internationally, reinforced the same truth: women’s absence was not only a social concern, but also a business opportunity waiting to be unlocked. This realization paved the way for WomHub, the commercial spin-out of WomEng, which has grown into the continent’s most comprehensive gender-lens ecosystem builder and home to Africa’s first female-focused co-working tech space and innovation hub.
Yet, while building platforms for women across STEM and entrepreneurship, Hema navigated a deeply personal and painful chapter. Shortly after taking the plunge and leaving the corporate world to focus on WomEng, she married. Not long into the marriage, her husband left. The reason was painfully simple—she did not fit the traditional idea of what a wife should be. The work she fought for, believed in, and was celebrated for—empowering women and advocating for equality—became the very thing she was punished for.
The divorce ignited years of shame, guilt, and intense imposter syndrome. She questioned her identity and capacity: How could she advocate for women while struggling to stand up for herself? How could she be strong publicly yet feel so diminished privately? For nearly half a decade, she shut down emotionally and socially. Professionally, however, she continued to perform at high levels, wearing the brave face many women are forced to adopt while quietly breaking inside.
This period marked one of the darkest seasons of her life. She grappled with mental health challenges—depression, isolation, and a slow erosion of confidence she had spent so many years building up. But in this darkness also emerged the clarity that would shape her future. When everything else felt uncertain, the only constant she could hold on to was her work. The certainty that her mission mattered above all else sustained her. It was within this vulnerable period that WomHub came to life. The heartbreak and trauma sharpened her conviction and reminded her why her work was not just professional; it was deeply personal. It gave her a resilience she did not know she possessed.
Rebuilding her personal life while building WomHub became intertwined acts of courage. Each step reinforced her belief that women can rise, rebuild, and lead despite profound personal upheavals.
Then in 2021, after nearly two decades in STEM and entrepreneurial ecosystems, Hema co-founded Five35 Ventures, an early-stage, female-focused venture capital fund. Five35 was the culmination of years spent witnessing a glaring inequity: despite immense talent and potential, women founders in Africa continued to be chronically underfunded, receiving less than 5% of venture capital on the continent. Five35 became the final piece of an ecosystem she had long been constructing—starting with talent (WomEng), moving to venture building (WomHub), and culminating in capital (Five35). It marked a shift from advocacy to action, enabling her to directly invest in closing the gender funding gap rather than merely spotlighting it.
At the age of 40, Hema entered another transformative chapter: the journey to motherhood through IVF using a donor. Self-admittedly, motherhood had not always been a calling for her, but the pandemic years brought introspection. After reflecting on what she had built and achieved, she asked herself a profound question: What am I building all of this for? She realized she was ready to start her own family, independently of a partner or conventional expectations. After a number of failed attempts over almost 3 years, taking an immense mental, physical and emotional toll, she birthed a “miracle” baby boy in 2024.
Becoming a mother to her son deepened her sense of purpose in powerful ways. Her lifelong work of creating a more equitable world for women was now intertwined with raising a boy who would grow into a man shaped by those values. The responsibility of nurturing the “men of the future” added a new layer of meaning to her mission. It reinforced her belief that systemic transformation is not just about today’s founders, but also about tomorrow’s leaders.
Across all these chapters—engineering, social entrepreneurship, divorce, venture creation, and motherhood—Hema’s leadership philosophy crystallized around three principles:
Purpose over position: Leadership is meaningful only when it widens access and opportunity.
Courage over perfection: The most transformative decisions are often made long before one feels ready.
Ecosystem thinking: Sustainable change requires holistic interventions, not fragmented fixes.
Her journey is nonlinear, deeply human, and profoundly intertwined with the ecosystems she is building.
Five35 Ventures: A Mission Rooted in Equity and Transformation
Five35 Ventures was founded on a simple but bold mission: close the gender funding gap in Africa and unlock the full economic potential of diverse founders. Its name represents its mission, and the opportunity the fund aims to exploit: Reasrech shows that if more women entrepreneurs were added to the African ecosystem, it could result in a GDP uplift of up to 5%, by leveraging the 35% higher return on investment that diverse teams can achieve over all male-led teams, if the playing field was level. Five35 exists to level this playing field.
The firm invests at the earliest stages—pre-seed to seed—where women founders face the greatest barriers. Its investment philosophy is built not only on financial returns, but on reshaping the story of who gets to build Africa’s future.
Over the next decade, Hema envisions Five35’s impact expanding across three dimensions:
Scale of capital: Building larger, institutionally backed funds to deploy meaningful capital into women-led innovation across Africa.
Depth of ecosystem influence: Using WomHub and its pan-African pipeline to address structural barriers, ensuring women founders are both funded and supported to scale.
Global positioning: Elevating African women founders to global recognition, investment readiness, and impact.
For Hema, Five35 is not merely a venture capital fund; it is a vehicle of venture catalysis.
Tackling Systemic Barriers with Systemic Solutions
Women entrepreneurs across Africa face layered challenges—access to capital, limited networks, restricted market access, gaps in technical training, and cultural expectations that impose disproportionate caregiving burdens or biased assumptions about risk, commitment, and scalability.
Five35 addresses these obstacles through an integrated ecosystem approach shaped by nearly two decades of groundwork:
Capital plus capacity: Early-stage funding paired with strategic support.
Pipeline strength: One of Africa’s largest pipelines of female founders through WomHub.
Intentional networks: Direct connections to co-investors, corporates, policymakers, and international markets.
Bias-neutral processes: Gender-lens frameworks from sourcing through diligence.
Community building: A sisterhood of founders who grow together.
Because Five35, WomHub, and WomEng span the full lifecycle—from talent to incubation to funding—their interventions are systemic rather than transactional.
The Investment Thesis: Backing Purposeful, Resilient, High-Impact Founders
Five35’s investment thesis focuses on female-founded or gender-diverse teams building tech-enabled solutions to Africa’s most pressing challenges. Their criteria include:
Strong founders: Character, grit, authenticity, clarity of purpose, and a willingness to learn.
Market relevance: Solutions in fintech, healthtech, edtech, climate, food systems, and the future of work.
Scalability: Regional or global expansion potential.
Traction: Early indicators of product-market fit and customer validation.
Gender diversity as an asset: A competitive advantage in decision-making and product understanding.
Impact with returns: Financial performance and social impact reinforcing each other.
At its core, Five35 invests in founders before companies, recognizing that ideas may pivot but exceptional founders endure.
Stories of Impact: When Women Are Funded, Economies Transform
Several success stories from the WomHub ecosystem illustrate the transformative potential of intentional gender-lens investing.
One founder built a pan-African climate-tech solution offering affordable cooling systems to smallholder farmers. Despite years of struggling to secure early capital due to biases about her youth and background, WomHub’s support enabled her to scale across markets, secure major partnerships, and attract significant co-investment.
Another founder developed a digital platform aimed at improving maternal health outcomes. After receiving capital and technical support from WomHub, her solution is now being piloted with global partners.
Perhaps the most striking story is of a founder who journeyed through nearly the entire ecosystem pipeline. She began in the WomEng Fellowship as an engineering student, worked as an engineer for a WomEng partner, transitioned into entrepreneurship supported by WomHub, and is now in the Five35 pipeline for potential investment. Her trajectory underscores the power of long-term ecosystem building over quick wins.
These stories affirm a deeper truth: when women are funded, families change, communities shift, and economies evolve. The narrative of who gets to lead innovation expands.
Leadership in a Fast-Changing World: What Founders Need Today
For Hema, successful founders embody a combination of adaptability, clarity of purpose, emotional resilience, inclusive leadership, and systems thinking. Five35 cultivates these traits through hands-on support, founder roundtables, coaching, mentorship, access to WomHub’s engineering and innovation ecosystem, and strong relational partnerships.
While all founders benefit from these qualities, Hema notes that many of these traits inherently shine in women founders, reinforcing her conviction that when women are supported by the right investors, they outperform.
Africa’s Innovation Horizon: Sectors Poised for Transformation
Hema is especially energized by emerging opportunities across:
1. Climate and sustainability innovation
2. Fintech 2.0 beyond payments
3. Healthtech and femtech
4. Food systems and agricultural technology
5. The future of work
6. Deep tech and artificial intelligence
Africa is shifting from a consumer of global innovation to a producer of contextually relevant, globally competitive solutions—and women are increasingly at the forefront of this transformation.
The Power of Diversity and the Work Still Ahead
To Hema, diversity drives innovation, better products, stronger problem-solving, reduced blind spots, and higher financial performance. Yet systemic changes are still required, including:
1. Gender-responsive capital
2. Supportive policy frameworks
3. Bias-free investment processes
4. Early STEM exposure
5. Childcare and support systems that enable women to lead
Equity demands redesigning the system, not simply adding women into broken structures.
Strategic Priorities for 2026 and Beyond
As Five35 looks toward 2026, its priorities include:
1. Scaling Fund I and preparing for Fund II
2. Strengthening presence across the continent
3. Catalyzing local and global co-investment
4. Leveraging WomHub to build the strongest female founder pipeline in Africa
5. Influencing policy and ecosystem-level change
By 2030, Hema hopes that it will no longer be noteworthy when women lead or receive capital—it will simply be standard.
A Message to Emerging Leaders: Find Your Tribe
Hema offers three deeply personal lessons to emerging leaders, especially women:
Your background is a foundation, not a limitation.
You do not need permission to lead.
Surround yourself with a tribe of women who hold you, challenge you, and see you.
Leadership can be lonely, but community transforms the path. For Hema, one of the most defining relationships of her life has been with her co-founder and soulmate, Naadiya. Over nearly two decades, they have built organizations, grown movements, traveled the world, and supported each other through triumphs and adversity. They have shattered the myth that women don’t play nice together and redefined the meaning of the power of partnership.
Another relationship that has significantly shaped her path in more recent years is that with WomHub’s now CEO, Anjani Harjeven. Having someone with equivalent values, mission and commitment step-in at WomHub, enabled her to step-out and build Five35. She now embarks on this latest journey with another phenomenal woman, Fatou Toure. These partnerships are a reminder of the generative, transformative power of female collaboration.
Her advice is simple yet profound: Find your tribe. Find the women who celebrate you, steady you, remind you of your power, and walk with you as you build the world you believe in.
A Movement, Not Just a Mission
If there is one message Hema wants the world to know, it is that her work is not simply about building a fund, incubator, or nonprofit. It is about igniting a movement—a paradigm shift proving that women’s economic participation is not a peripheral goal but a driver of continental transformation.
Through WomEng, WomHub, and Five35 Ventures, she has spent nearly two decades shaping an ecosystem that supports women across every phase of the STEM and entrepreneurship value chain. The next decade is about scale, systems change, and ensuring African women are not just participants in innovation but architects of it.
With Africa gaining momentum globally, voices like Hema Vallabh’s guide the journey forward—reminding us that real transformation is rooted in courage, collaboration, and the principle that opportunity should be a shared right, not an exclusive advantage.
And with that belief, she continues to build, to raise, to invest, and to reimagine a future where women lead not because they are invited, but because they belong.