The Aspen Institute

Olivia Nava (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and San Francisco, California) is co-founder of Juabar, a social enterprise in Tanzania that creates electricity convenience stores powered by solar. Juabar creates business opportunities in Tanzanian communities that lack electricity by leasing pop-up electricity stores to entrepreneurs and then supporting these entrepreneurs in their operations. Once in the Juabar network, franchisees have the opportunity to grow their businesses through accessing finance to increase their store’s energy generation capacity and/or by adding solar product and lifestyle goods retail distribution. Olivia’s passion is uncovering what drives human behaviors and fosters creativity in others. She employs Human Centered Design in everything she does, which has led her through designing HIV programs in Mozambique, funding health innovation programs as a program officer at Tides in San Francisco and now as CEO of Juabar. She received her MBA from California College of the Arts in 2012 and her BA in Classics from UCLA in 2002.  (Attended Global Alliances Program, delegation to Myanmar)