Deborah Choi is a dynamic entrepreneur, born in Nigeria and raised in the United States.

She is the co-founder and Managing Director at Founderland, Europe’s fastest-growing community for underrepresented founders, and the founder of Kibo, a digital platform pioneering finance aimed to improve the lives of women. Deborah’s initiatives also include coaching, speaking, writing and building supportive networks through various projects and ventures.

Across a 20-year career, Deborah has founded six companies, collectively raising over €2M and has scaled a bootstrapped business to over €100K MRR. She has been a sought-after advisor and consultant to hundreds of fast-growth, venture-backed startups and scale-ups across Europe, South America, Tel Aviv and Asia.

An innate community builder, Deborah has created impactful platforms that bring together business and cultural leaders. Her efforts in creating Founderland (600+ women of colour members), Black Creative Nights dinner club and Bom Diaspora angel syndicate, demonstrate her commitment to fostering connections across diverse communities and overlooked founders.

Deborah’s background includes senior leadership roles in growth and operations management at both startups and publicly traded companies. She has been recognized as a BusinessWeek ‘Top 25 under 25’ with her first startup and listed in Business Insider's top 25 Zukunftsmacherinnen (Futuremakers) for 2022. She has also been featured in TechCrunch, Sifted, EU Startups and Business Insider, to name a few.

Deborah’s honors also include becoming a recipient of the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund (2021), being named a Top 100 Woman for Diversity in Germany (2023), a Top 40 finalist for Miss Germany (2023) and most recently a Woman of the Year by BGA (2024). She is a frequent speaker on topics such as leadership, resilience, and entrepreneurship, both on-stage and on select podcasts.

Deborah holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Chicago and currently splits her time between Berlin and Marrakech with her daughter.