Charlene Chen

Chief Operating Officer at BitPesa

Charlene currently serves as the COO of BitPesa, an online payment platform that leverages digital currency to significantly lower the cost of making remittance and business payments to and from sub-Saharan Africa.

BitPesa enables individuals and businesses to make payments directly to or from mobile money and bank networks across East and West Africa. Their clients range from international companies who pay freelancers and software developers in Uganda to social enterprises that transfer international capital to pay staff and cover operations in Kenya to Nigerian importers paying suppliers in China and Dubai.

Charlene has over 10 years of private sector and social sector experience working with a variety of organizations ranging from internet startups to Fortune 500 companies to international non-profits. She began her career as an IT consultant at Deloitte Consulting, but during business school made a career shift to focus on social entrepreneurship, technology, and mobile financial services in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2015, Charlene was listed as one of Innotribe’s “Power Women in Fintech.” She holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California – Berkeley and a B.S. in Psychology and Computer Science from Duke University.