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Ela Krzak is a finance professional, entrepreneur, and mentor with over 10 years of international experience across financial services, energy, and private investment environments. She has worked in London and Paris, supporting multi-entity organisations, investment reporting, and performance analysis.
She is the co-founder of BrandKit and an active mentor for entrepreneurs through ADIE. Ela is currently completing an Executive Master in Change at INSEAD, focused on developing leaders in today’s fast-changing world.
Passionate about education and mentorship, she supports students and young professionals in building strong technical foundations, strategic thinking, and confident career paths.
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I am the Founder, CTO and CEO of De Graft Management (DGM), a pioneering force in property, asset, and waste management technology. At the forefront of innovation, Lena leads an award-winning company harnessing Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and the Internet of Things to transform the built environment across the public and private sectors UK and Africa.
With over 25 years of experience delivering technology and more than two decades in the built environment, I specialise in designing user-focused, locally driven, digital-first solutions. Her work spans the UK, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Nigeria, and Togo, championing sustainable and scalable innovation in critical infrastructure sectors. Beyond her leadership at DGM, I am an Advisor to Astia VC and a Peer Review College Expert Assessor for UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships. I have mentored rising entrepreneurs at NatWest Bank London Accelerator, Roehampton University, and Enterprise Nation, and previously served as Ambassador for Brunel University and Connected Places Catapult.
I have advised the governments in Kenya, Sierra Leone and Ghana to shape national technology strategies and has been a judge for global awards, including EY Enterprise Impact Program, the Global Sourcing Association, Real Deals Growing Business Awards and Jack Ma’s African Business Heroes. In 2025 DGM were the proud winners of the London Southern Enterprise Awards Built Environment Innovator of the Year and I was awarded IBWISC Inspirational Business Woman in STEM and Construction at the House of Lords in the UK Parliament.
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Senior investment analyst with exposure to different asset classes and equipped with strong financial background along with experience in valuation methods. Also, my skills include fund management, portfolio management, financial modeling, deal sourcing, deal screening, and due diligence.
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I'm so excited that your company is seeking a PE Mentor out of Singapore. My experience working with PE Firms and MA&O organizations provides your company a very unique opportunity and perspective on managing the turn-around journey.
Although I am very experienced in the Consulting and Transformation elements of PE, it is my firm belief that I could be that catalyst for WSO with the right skills and traits necessary to drive innovation within the organization, identifying areas of improvement, encourage creative problem-solving, and engage in a culture of collaboration via a myriad of optimization methodologies aligned with the intent of WSO. My years of experience in Digital Transformations, Organizational Turn-Arounds via Process Optimization, Supply Chain Integration and Strategy Adaptation assures the successful retention of best practices that will deliver direct bottom-line business outcomes. Furthermore, my in-depth knowledge in a variety of sectors from automotive, electronics, healthcare devices and other service industries will be a huge plus to your organization in resolving supply chain and resource utilization challenges as well as facilitating / coaching teams to drive the right behaviors for sustainability. The culmination of knowledge I’ve gained working here in Asia for the past 30+ years in various consulting and managerial roles ensures with full confidence, these kinds of outcomes/returns: Reductions in Monthly Operating Costs by 20-40%; Increased Productivity by 50%+; Reduction of Lead Times by up to 75% and increased revenue growth of 30% and EBITDA margins by 20%.
Knowing the kind of dedication and courage expected in this role along with my principles of integrity of purpose, passion for execution and leadership presence, I truly welcome the opportunity to discuss this further with you.
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Seasoned financial markets professional with over 30 years of experience in banking, treasury, and investment management. Former Managing Director at Citi, holding key leadership roles in treasury, risk management, fixed income, and derivative trading across Australia, Europe and the Asia Pacific region. Expertise in proprietary trading, liquidity management, fund structuring, and regulatory compliance. Strong track record in building high-performing teams and delivering strategic financial solutions
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Don Dea serves as a mentor to senior executives through Duke Fuqua School of Business, where he has advised leaders across strategy, governance, and career transition for more than a decade. His mentoring portfolio includes board members and senior leaders affiliated with AICPA, as well as three sitting CFOs overseeing complex, mid to large scale organizations. He has also advised and supported more than 70 Asian CEOs through leadership and advisory board initiatives focused on governance, growth, and cross cultural leadership. Don brings deep board experience as a current and former board chair, and he has been named Chair Emeritus by proclamation in recognition of sustained leadership and service. He also mentors academic and administrative leaders connected to Excelsior University, supporting institutional strategy and executive development. Across all mentoring roles, Don is known for candid, values grounded guidance that helps accomplished leaders sharpen judgment, expand impact, and lead with purpose.
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£2 mill portfolio builder from scratch
Trainer and mentor in Serviced Accommodation industry
Building clients property portfolio
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• Bachelor's in Financial and Business Economics.
• Passed CSC exam.
• Excellent communication skills including business writing and presentation skills.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office (MS Excel, Access, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook), SQL and HTML.
• Strong command in business economics and finance.
• Tremendous interpersonal skills with the ability to multi task and attention to detail with punctually meeting deadlines.
• Ability to work in fast paced and volatile business environment with showing results as per desired.
• Actively participate in social works and believe in giving back to the community
• Fluent command over English, Urdu, Sindhi, Gujrati and Punjabi
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Yong Yao, MBA, CGMA, FCMA
Board Director | Chief Financial Officer | Capital Markets Executive
Yong Yao is a senior financial executive and board director with more than 27 years of global leadership experience across publicly listed and private companies in biotechnology, life sciences, financial services, manufacturing, logistics, and real estate. He brings a rare combination of deep capital markets expertise, disciplined governance, and operational execution across North America, Asia, and Europe.
Mr. Yao currently serves as Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Lobe Sciences Ltd. (CSE: LOBE | OTCQB: LOBEF), where he leads financial strategy, capital markets execution, investor relations, and cross-border regulatory compliance across seven subsidiaries. He is also Independent Director and Chair of the Audit Committee of PSIG Group (NASDAQ: PSIG), overseeing financial reporting, internal controls, and governance for a global logistics platform.
Previously, Mr. Yao served as CFO and Executive Director of ASEA Group, a multinational supply-chain and logistics group with approximately CAD 70 million in annual revenue, where he led equity and debt financings, built consolidated reporting frameworks across three countries, and integrated finance with real-time operational pricing and cost controls. He also served as CFO of Mountain Valley MD Holdings Inc. (CSE: MVMD CSE | OTCQB: MVMDF), strengthening public-company disclosure, tax structuring, and asset-impairment governance.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Yao was CFO and Board Director of Hanalytics BioMind, a fast-growing AI medical-imaging company operating in 15 countries. He raised USD 250 million in private equity, scaled the company from start-up to USD 100 million in annual revenue, and led multiple acquisitions and pre-IPO preparations. He previously held executive leadership roles at Xinyuan Real Estate Corp. (NYSE: XIN), Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Scotiabank, managing large-scale capital, financial accounting, regulatory, and operational mandates.
He holds an MBA from McGill University, a BSc in Biology from Nankai University, and holds professional designations of Fellow Chartered Management Accountant (CIMA UK) and Chartered Global Management Accountant (AICPA & CIMA) with good standing.
Across his career, Mr. Yao has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in equity and debt, executed complex cross-border transactions, and built scalable finance and governance platforms that align capital discipline with innovation and growth.
Public bio:
- Experience across JPMorgan, American Express, and TikTok, now leading treasury initiatives at a large-scale fintech platform responsible for liquidity strategy, cash optimization and mission-critical payment infrastructure
- Manage liquidity, cash positioning, and complex payment flows within high-volume financial ecosystems
- Strong foundation in treasury strategy, payments infrastructure, merchant settlements, and financial risk management across both global banks and scaled technology platforms
- Successfully navigated highly competitive interview processes, receiving offers and advanced-stage progression from firms including Blackstone and other major financial institutions
- Provide tactical, experience-based guidance on breaking into treasury, fintech, and operational finance roles, positioning candidates to compete at top-tier firms
Frequently Asked Questions
Can’t find an answer? Please send an email to [email protected]
The WSO mentor service runs at a very slight profit (~5-10% net margin) in order to help motivate amazing professionals to provide great (free) advice in the forums (many mentors have green "mentor" buttons next to their usernames) which strengthens the entire WSO community. Luckily, there is a surprising number of elite professionals within the WSO community that love giving back to motivated candidates. We also recently automated the mentor matching with an algo that helps reduce the manual work needed on the backend should a requested mentor not be available. Prices range from as low as $57 up to $997 depending on the package you purchase and the mentor you select. Given the success of our service and the number of repeat clients we have, we know that we can afford to run on thin profit margins and serve thousands of applicants. We also know that many of you will follow the advice of our mentors and invest in additional courses and/or services from WSO.
After checking out, your request will immediately be sent to the mentor you selected. You will be expected to fill our some basic information (location, industry preference, etc) along with upload a Word version of your resume in order to help the mentor decide if they feel like they are a great match. As soon as they accept (usually within ~9-12 hours), an email will be sent making an introduction. Your mentor will introduce him/herself and then proceed to review your current resume and/or offer times when you can connect for a mentor session. Over the following days, you will schedule a time that is mutually convenient for you initial phone call to go over what you need help with (mock interview, career consultation and/or both). If you would like to continue with this mentor, you can schedule more hours anywhere from 1 hour to 3+ hours with him/her over the following weeks & months.
Typically the match happens within 12hrs. If your preferred mentor has not responded within 9 hours or they indicate they can't take you on as a mentor, we will notify other top mentors that have the most in common with the mentor you selected (based on our matching algo). These backup mentors will indicate to you if they are available and you have the choice to move forward with one of them, get a refund or wait longer for your preferred mentor. If for whatever reason we cannot match you in time and/or there are no mentors that are available that you'd like to work with, we will refund your purchase in full, no questions asked.
We have an incredible team of 1,000+ dedicated mentors across top firms all around the world. Our #1 goal is to make sure you are placed in the hands of the most competent and detail-oriented professional in your specific target industry. This coupled with our strict process ensures a smooth and thorough experience. Why do we use actual professionals? The answer is simple: they are the ones ACTUALLY SCREENING APPLICATIONS for their own firms! They know what it takes to make it out of the trash pile and into the interview pile. On top of this, since we have been doing mentor sessions for over a decade across THOUSANDS of clients, we are able to immediately identify a top mentor and feed them more clients to ensure happy customers like you (due to our strict screening process). Our team includes investment bankers at all the top bulge brackets and elite boutique banks as well as private equity, hedge fund and VC professionals at the most prestigious funds. We also have reviewers at the top management consulting firms in the world, elite prop trading firms, top corporate finance roles as well as other related finance careers.
Usually these are all self-limiting beliefs, but if you're unsure if we are a good match for you, please send us a quick email to [email protected] and we can send over some bios if we think there might be a potential good match for you.
Too Young / Too Inexperienced: We do NOT recommend our mentor service until you at least have at least some relevant WORK experience that we can leverage. For the young clients out there, this means an internship, ideally in your target or related industry. If you are still in high school, it is unlikely that you have this experience. The earliest we'd recommend doing a mentor session is early freshman or early sophomore year as you prepare for summer internship recruiting. If you have no relevant experience then it probably doesn't make sense to sign up for the service. Our mentors are amazing, but they aren't magicians. If you tell us you really want to be in Investment Banking or Private Equity (for example) and everything in your background points to law or medicine, it's going to be an uphill battle. On the other hand, if you have unrelated experience but you have started the transition process by taking relevant classes and joining relevant clubs and associations, we'd love to work with you. You may not be the most competitive candidate, but we will highlight the most relevant education and functions at your current job that would translate well across industries.
Too Old / Too Experienced: We DO recommend our mentor service for more experienced professionals that are looking to make a transition or have an interview coming up. We have several very senior mentors that can answer the tough questions and make sure you are up to date on the latest trends in your target industry. However, before you move forward, we encourage you to give yourself an honest assessment. If you are looking to make the transition and have not made any steps outside of considering this mentor program, you probably aren't ready. If you've taken steps (education, new degrees, courses, etc) and feel like you're ready, we're on board and eager to help!
Yes, but if you have a negative attitude you are unlikely to have success. If you think a mentor session is an automatic referral, please don't bother to hire us.
Yes, our mentors often do refer our clients for open positions at their firms (over 20%), however, this should not be asked of our mentors to avoid a conflict of interest and it should not be expected as part of the service. It is up to you to impress the mentor if this is your goal, however, we believe you can gain much more out of the experience by being honest about your weaknesses and concerns with the mentor so there can be an open dialogue on how to improve your chances.
The only discounts are for larger packages and more hours purchased at once. This is an incredibly labor intensive 1-on-1 service using finance professionals that typically make well over $200/hr and are doing this primarily to give back.
This is a personal question and the answer is naturally subjective. If you are serious about landing a job in investment banking, private equity, hedge funds, trading, asset management, management consulting or any other competitive industry, it's more than likely that the answer to that question is a resounding "YES".
Career services advisers at your school are not screening applications for interviews...neither are your classmates. If you do happen to have a friend in the industry, are they going to take the hours necessary to give you a realistic mock interview? Odds are that their time is limited outside the office and if they do give you some guidance, it won't be as thorough as our expert mentors. If you look at the competitive nature of recruiting nowadays, why would leave your application up to chance when many of these jobs pay well over $100,000?
Join the 1,000+ candidates just like you who have already used the WSO Mentor Service
If you’re reading this, you’re here for a reason: because you want to be one of the very few who gets an an elite job and because you need help doing it. The choice really is yours. And your opportunity really is limited.
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