From the Free State goldfields to a leading global investor

Situated in the Northern Free State, Welkom is a city more renowned for producing rugby and cricket players than business and investment luminaries (with Canonical founder and space tourist Mark Shuttleworth the most notable exception). From early on, however, it was clear that Greeff wasn’t going to fit neatly into that mould. Even as a young girl, she showed signs of the academic prowess that would one day take her around the globe. With her father working in the information technology space, she also had early and prolonged exposure to technology.     

That academic ability and passion for technology continued when Greeff and her family relocated to Cape Town. That much was evident when, after matriculating from the renowned Hoerskool DF Malan in 2008, Greeff went on to obtain a degree in Mechatronic Engineering from the University of Cape Town, followed by a Masters in inclusive innovation. During that period she was also a Bertha Scholar and Allan Gray Orbis Foundation Fellow. Additionally, she was a founding member of Engineers Without Borders South Africa, an NPO developed from a student society with the aim of creating a platform for socially conscious engineers.   

Fresh off her first Masters, Greeff completed an MSc in Biomedical Engineering at Oxford University, followed by an MBA from the renowned Saïd Business School. 

Throughout much of her academic career, Greeff was committed to exploring how technology could be used to address healthcare inequalities in low-resource markets. But while at Oxford, she realised that there were, “so many other social impact projects to plug into.” 

As a result, she got involved in the Smart Handpumps project, a DFID-funded project which won the Oxford Vice Chancellor’s Innovation Prize in 2018. The project used machine learning to address water supply issues in rural Kenya, and then later in Ethiopia and Bangladesh. Greeff incorporated her work on the project into her MSc and, ultimately, her PhD. 

That passion for addressing real-world challenges was further underlined when she spent 18 months working as a consultant for M-Kopa, a Kenyan company that provides connected financing to unbanked people, allowing them access to essential products including solar lighting, televisions, fridges, smartphones, and financial services. 

“All these experiences have seen me combine my passion for engineering with a desire to develop solutions that help solve real-world challenges through innovation,” she says.

Greeff’s attitude of applying her interests and passions to real-world problems found another avenue while she was completing her PhD. In 2016, she began investing through eToro, the world’s leading social trading platform. She quickly realised that many of the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools that she was using in her studies could be applied to the investment sector. 

As a result, she’s been able to deliver an average annual return of nearly 30% since joining the platform. For context, the S&P 500 has only been able to deliver comparable returns in two of the past 10 years (2013 and 2019). It’s something that allowed her to be comfortable while working as a research associate and later as a research fellow at Oxford. 

Now, Greeff is on a mission to help other girls and women in particular use those technologies to build financial independence. 

“AI and machine learning algorithms play an important role in my investment process,” she says. “They allow me to analyse huge amounts of data so that I can make informed decisions about what shares to invest in. Combined with platforms such as eToro, they can help others achieve financial freedom without needing to have large amounts of capital to lay down.”

“With the available tools and technology, people can minimise the risks associated with investing in emerging assets and platforms,” she adds. “The more women explore what’s available to them, the more likely they are to invest in ways that generate strong returns rather than worrying about risk.” 

By being followable and actively promoting her approach to investment, Greeff is also ensuring that other women don’t have to follow the same academic path as her to achieve similar results. They can simply follow her on eToro. 

Ultimately then, Greeff’s legacy might not lie in her economic achievements (impressive as they are). Instead, it might just be inspiring a generation of women to embrace technology for their financial freedom.

Read about women who are paving the way for others in the 17th edition of Standard Bank Top Women Leaders: