Catherine Denis is Co-Founder and COO of Numida, a pioneering East African fintech providing unsecured digital working capital loans to micro and small businesses via a mobile app.

A French Canadian with a Systems Design Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo and an MPA/ID from Harvard Kennedy School, Catherine spent 8+ years living and working across Uganda, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Mali, Haiti, and Colombia.

Catherine previously served as a Consultant Analyst at The World Bank and held roles at EarthEnable, Polymath Ventures, and Engineers Without Borders Canada, building deep expertise in international development and financial inclusion.

At Numida, she leads operations and strategy, helping build the proprietary credit scoring system and digital underwriting processes that allow Numida to serve cash-based, semi-formal businesses with no digital transaction history.

Numida, backed by Y Combinator and Serena Ventures, has disbursed over $20M in working capital to more than 27,000 micro and small businesses in East Africa, growing monthly disbursements from $250K to $2M.