Kenza Lahlou

Kenza holds a BSc and MSc in Computer Science and Data Mining from INSA Rouen in France. She also completed a Master's in Business from ESSEC Business School on the Singapore campus. In 2016, she was selected by Goldman Sachs and the U.S. Departement of States to complete an Executive Program on Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School part of the 10k Women entrepreneurs initiative. She also enrolled in a Venture Capital executive program at Stanford University in partnership with 500 Startups (VC Unlocked Summer 2016). Her personal mission is to back the next generation of African success stories that will change the continent narrative.

Kenza Lahlou is the co-founder and General Partner of Outlierz Ventures, an early-stage Africa-focused VC fund, based out of Morocco. The fund invests in Seed and Pre-Series A tech-enabled companies solving fundamental problems across key industries in 4 main markets in Africa: Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya. Kenza started Outlierz Ventures in 2019 after spending four years on the ground kick-starting Morocco's startup ecosystem via StartupYourLife (SYL), a pioneer ecosystem builder she co-founded and run from 2014 to 2018 to support and connect tech entrepreneurs to the resources they needed. Prior to that, Kenza had a life-changing work-experience in San Francisco where she joined a boutique advisory firm to support startups from emerging markets scaling into the US. This is where she realized the untapped potential of Africa and decided to come back to Morocco in 2013 and be a vector of change. Before that, Kenza spent 8 years studying and working abroad first in France, then in Singapore, and in the US. She gained experience in the tech industry with Xerox Research Center (AI project), in management consulting for large industries, in Private Equity as a Financial Analyst at Attijari Invest, and in the tech industry as Partnership Manager at Viadeo.

As a member of Class 25, Kenza is serving her fellowship at Outlierz Ventures under the mentorship of Dany Farha and Walter Baddoo.