A founding Director of Heirs Holdings, the family-owned investment company, investing in strategic sectors of the African economy, including energy, power, banking, insurance and financial services, technology, real estate and hospitality and healthcare, and committed to improving lives and transforming Africa, Dr Elumelu also chairs several Heirs Holdings group boards, including:

• Avon Healthcare Limited (Avon HMO), Nigeria’s leading health insurance provider, and Avon Medical Practice, a growing network of full-service clinics and medical centres, driven by her commitment to improving access to quality healthcare in Nigeria.

• Heirs Insurance Brokers, the brokerage arm of Heirs Insurance Group. Through an extensive network of insurance partners, Heirs Insurance Brokers delivers tailored solutions that help clients mitigate risks, protect assets, and preserve wealth.

• Transcorp Hotels Plc, Nigeria’s leading hospitality company, owner of the iconic Transcorp Hilton Hotel Abuja, where she drives its commitment to redefining hospitality across the continent. Transcorp Hotels is a subsidiary of Transnational Corporation Plc, Nigeria’s largest quoted conglomerate with strategic investments in the power, hospitality, and energy sectors.

As Co-Founder of The Tony Elumelu Foundation, committed to empowering entrepreneurs across Africa, Dr Elumelu advocates extensively for gender inclusion and youth entrepreneurship, across the continent. The Foundation has empowered over 27,000 young African men and women across the 54 African countries with non-refundable grants, mentorship, and business training.

In 2023, in recognition of Dr Elumelu’s healthcare leadership, entrepreneurship development, and philanthropy, she was conferred the ‘Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic’. In 2026, she was recognised as a TIME100 Philanthropy honouree, named among the world’s most influential philanthropists for her transformative impact across Africa through the Foundation.

In 2018, Dr. Elumelu was appointed as the Private Sector Champion for Immunisation in Africa by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. In this role, she harnesses her knowledge, corporate networks, and expertise from the healthcare and business sectors to champion vaccination and immunisation in Africa.

She also sits on a number of regional and global boards including the Yale Institute for Global Health, the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (EJS) Presidential Centre for Women and Development, the African Union’s African High-Level Ministerial Committee on Global Health Architecture (AHLMC).

Dr. Elumelu holds a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree from the University of Benin, with advanced executive and professional certifications from the International Institute for Management Development, Switzerland, Harvard Business School, and the Indian School of Business. Her career as a medical doctor includes experience with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, in Nigeria, and Grantham and District Hospital, Grantham, in the UK.

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Mr. Elumelu pursues a single ambition — to improve lives and transform Africa — by committing long-term capital to the sectors that shape the continent’s future: financial services, power, energy, hospitality, technology and healthcare.

His track record in banking is among the most consequential in modern African finance. He founded Standard Trust Bank and led its merger with United Bank for Africa, forging a pan-African institution that today operates in 20 African countries, as well as the United Kingdom, France, the UAE and the United States. In America, UBA is the only African banking group with a commercial deposit-taking presence. He served as Group Chairman of UBA from 2014 to 2026.

He also chairs Transcorp Group, Nigeria’s leading listed conglomerate, with interests in power, energy and hospitality. Transcorp’s power business accounts for 15% of Nigeria’s installed generating capacity and anchors a larger ambition: creating Africa’s largest integrated energy business, and ensuring that the value of Africa’s resources is captured in Africa.

He founded Heirs Energies, which acquired Shell’s OML 17 and rapidly tripled production to more than 70,000 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE), while integrating gas production to meet Nigeria’s domestic energy needs. Heirs Energies became Seplat Energy’s single largest shareholder in January 2026 and both groups now account for circa 20% of Nigeria’s oil production.

With his wife, Dr Awele Elumelu, he established the Tony Elumelu Foundation in 2010 to advance Africapitalism — his conviction that the African private sector is the continent’s most powerful catalyst for social and economic development. Since its flagship Entrepreneurship Programme launched in 2015, the Foundation has committed more than US$120 million in non-refundable seed capital to 24,633 young entrepreneurs across all 54 African countries — businesses that have since generated US$4.2 billion in revenue and created 1.5 million jobs.

In 2020, TIME magazine named Mr. Elumelu as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, and in 2026 Mr. and Dr Elumelu were celebrated as TIME Magazine 2026 TIME100 Philanthropy honourees. Mr. Elumelu sits on a number of global boards, including the Global Leadership Council of UNICEF Generation Unlimited and the International Monetary Fund’s Advisory Council on Entrepreneurship and Growth.

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