THE Development Bank of Jamaica’s (DBJ’s) Venture Capital Conference 2014 opens with Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) tomorrow at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston, under the theme “Towards a dynamic ecosystem… linking capital, innovation, entrepreneurship for growth”.

The conference is expected to be attended by a wide cross-section of local business persons, the Diaspora and the wider Caribbean, including entrepreneurs, family businesses, business owners, regulators, bankers, accoun-tants, lawyers, investors (individual and institutional), academics as well as university students. International venture capital experts from the US, Latin America and as far as the Middle East will participate in the event.

“This year’s conference offers many opportunities to network and build new acquaintances and offer insights into this growing industry, and implications for how you do business and strategies to achieve success” stated (DBJ).

Industry leaders including Joseph Matalon, DBJ chairman; Therese Turner-Jones, country representative, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); Fabio Pittaluga, senior World Bank specialist; Nigel Romano, vice- president, operations, CDB; and Keith Nurse, executive director, UWI Consulting Inc, will lead the discussions which will be officially opened by Minister of Finance and Planning, Dr Peter Phillips.

Keynote speaker will be Josh Lerner, professor, investment banking at Harvard Business School, and chair of the Entrepreneurial Management unit, much of whose research focuses on the structure and role of venture capital and private equity organisations.

Other speakers are: Susana Garcia Robles, chief investment officer, Multi-lateral Investment Fund; Diana Smallridge, president, International Financial Consulting Ltd; Yousef Hamidaddin, CEO, Oasis 500 Amman, Jordan and Angel Investor, LINC, Scotland, Nelson Gray.

Round-table discussions will focus on several topics of current interest, including “Backing Women Entrepreneurs”, which is expected to highlight the issues facing female entrepreneurs and generate strategies for women-owned businesses to access a sizeable share of the venture capital funding in Jamaica’s emerging market.

Panellists include: Dr Winsome Leslie, the lead specialist in the Access to Finance Unit of the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), a private sector window of the IDB; Lorna Green, the first female founder, owner and Chief Executive Officer of a Jamaicanm information tech-nology company, Digital Transtec Limited; Lisa Bell, managing director of the National Export-Import (EXIM) Bank; Yaneek Page, the founder and managing director of Future Services International Limited (FSIL), a pioneering company in legal funding, litigant support and enterprise risk management training in Jamaica and Roxanne Wanliss, a young entrepreneur in the information and communication technology industry.

Zachary Harding will moderate the session on the creative economy and the panellists are: Dr Keith Nurse; Horace Madison, CEO, Madison Strategic Group; Bruce James, president, MVP Track Club; Jeffery Cobham, DBJ director; and Yousef Hamidaddin.