Lauri Elliott

Lauri Elliott is a strategist with over 25 years of business experience, specializing in global business, innovation, technology, and new ventures and start-ups. As a noted broadcaster, author, speaker, and consultant, she helps small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs bring life and profit to business ideas in tough, turbulent business environments around the globe, with a particular focus on emerging markets, including Africa.

Lauri is the founder of Conceptualee, Inc., under which she created the brands Afribiz™ (Afribiz.net ), GlobalBizconcierge™ (Globalbizconcierge.com), The Art of Making Business Happen™ (Theartofbiz.net), Leverage Point Strategy™ (Leveragepointstrategy.com), and Afristrat™(Afristrat.com).

As the Director of Afribiz™ Media, Lauri has developed a solid reputation as a journalist, broadcaster, and media personality. She is the primary host of AfribizTalk™, a regular radio show about doing business and investing in Africa, and she writes frequently for publications such as Brainstorm magazine, an ITWeb publication, in South Africa.

In addition, Lauri is the author of 101 Leverage Points for Doing Business in Africa and Export to Explode Cash Flow and Profits: Creating New Streams of Business in Asia, Africa, and the Americas with Little Investment. Her next books, which will be released in early 2011, are 101 Leverage Points for Doing Business in Emerging Markets and The Global Entrepreneur’s Handbook (Globalentrepreneurhandbook.com). She also is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Social Networking, which will be published by SAGE Publications in 2011, and she co-authored a chapter on e-governance in Gauteng Province, South Africa, for the forthcoming (2011) E-Governance and Civic Engagement: Factors and Determinants of E-Democracy, to be published by IGI Global. Her poster presentation “Social Politics in Business in Africa” was accepted for Duke University’s Political Networks Conference in 2010.

Lauri sits on the board of advisers for the Center for Global Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Management (CGEEM) at Morgan State University, which focuses on equipping U.S. SMEs to enter international business. In this capacity, she is leading the development of the Emerging Market Information Team (EMIT), designed to provide information and intelligence particularly useful to SMEs.  For her work on behalf of SMEs, she received recognition from the U.S. Congress for connecting U.S. businesses to business in Africa.

In addition to encouraging SMEs in the U.S., Lauri is also committed to the development of SMEs in emerging markets. While in South Africa from 2005 to 2008, she fostered local economic development systems driven by youth enterprises.

And finally, Lauri’s clients over the years have included corporations, SMEs, educational institutions, and public-sector agencies both in the U.S. and in South Africa. She is considered an expert in strategic/process facilitation, business strategy, mentoring and coaching, change management, organizational development, human performance technology, project management, technical writing, technology, and instructional design. Her consulting work has involved projects with such organizations as Lucent Technologies, Xerox, Microsoft, University of Michigan, Deloitte and Touche, Unisys, District of Columbia, and Gauteng Province in South Africa.