Vona Aghoghovbia-Ezichi, Managing Director, Head of Finance Europe & APAC

Vona Aghoghovbia-Ezichi is a strategic business leader with 17+ years’ experience covering the asset management and real estate industry. Her extensive and diverse background in financial services, audit, commercial accounting, governance, risk management and compliance has provided her with the ability to deliver strategic insight that generates sustainable growth.

She is currently managing director, head of finance for Europe and APAC at Nuveen, one of the largest investment managers in the world with specialist expertise around the globe.

Vona sits on a number of governance boards, partnering with executives to develop strategies, oversee risk management practices to solidify growth policies and develop tactics that improve business financial performance, corporate sustainability and increase stakeholder value.

She is a commercially astute professional with excellent communication, critical thinking and analytical skills. She leverages her global experience to collaborate with stakeholders across all levels, bringing strong values, ethics, culture and conduct management, risk awareness and insights to global senior roles, whilst delivering unique and authentic perspectives to support various facets of businesses.

Vona regularly speaks at public events and conferences on various topics, and she is also very passionate about mentoring, inspiring and nurturing professionals to flourish and succeed in their careers. She started her professional career in financial services audit with KPMG and BNP Paribas.

Outside of work, she co-founded ‘DVees’, a luxury food and drinks company pioneering West African flavours through exquisite products with her sisters. Vona serves on the University of Bristol Alumni Committee.

Furthermore, she works with an amazing board of trustees of a UK charity as the governance and compliance lead, advising and supporting them on a range of compliance matters, policies and procedures, and she conducts monitoring to ensure alignment with charity commission standards.
Vona is keen to hear about non-executive board opportunities and interesting initiatives to which she can lend her voice, expertise and resources.

Prior to joining Nuveen, Vona worked with JLL, a world leader in real estate and investment management as working capital strategy director, global director of accounting and head of risk management and compliance oversight – property and asset management. She provided executive leadership with insightful reporting to enable strategic decision making and helped to drive execution and create governance frameworks to manage risk, preserve assets and ensure efficient and effective finance operations.

She also had project based responsibilities that included creating and managing supply chain finance governance framework, client payment terms, policy and governance framework, and working with treasury to translate quantitative and qualitative data into risk assessment reporting to enhance working capital management.