Richard Klopp, PhD

Advisor, Venture Building & Capital Strategy

Richard Klopp, PhD is a serial founder, fractional executive, and capital strategist with more than 30 years of experience launching, turning around, and scaling mission-driven ventures across 20+ countries. He is best known as Launch Executive Director of H2O Africa, the organization founded by Matt Damon around the Running the Sahara expedition and film. Through his firm AVENIR Consulting, Richard has held growth-focused leadership roles across 27 startups and 13 turnarounds, often running fractional executive work for three organizations at once. As CEO of Water for Good, he led a full turnaround of the organization and its 100+ international staff while brokering and managing over $40 million of water projects in the Central African Republic and incubating the country's first enterprise-based well-drilling business, CAR Ventures. His venture-building track record also includes BDA Foundation & Pharm African, a blended-value venture pairing a nonprofit foundation with a biopharmaceutical company with donor partners including the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and WWF,  which won first prize at the SME Innovation Competition for its "Triple Bottom Line" business model;  Launch Executive Director of the Able Fund, the social-impact arm of the Investable business accelerator; and fractional Chief Revenue Officer/COO of Water4, where he led the turnaround that reshaped the organization into a venture studio spanning African water enterprises across five countries. 

Richard's leadership has repeatedly been sought at the sector's highest levels: he served as Interim Executive Director of ARNOVA, entrusted by a board representing the top intellectuals of the nonprofit sector, and as an advisor to the World Health Organization's IARC Resource Maximization Committee, invited by its Executive Director to help fund a new cancer research center in Lyon. His commitment to developing the next generation of leaders extends into the classroom, with faculty appointments at The Fundraising School at Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and Andrews University's International Development Program, teaching NGO managers across Africa, Europe, and North America, and currently at the University of Jamestown's Doctor of Leadership program

He holds a PhD in Philanthropic Studies from Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and an MA (Honours) in Philosophy and Humanitarian Ethics from Laval University, where he was awarded the Prix du Séminaire de Québec for the best master's thesis of the year. Richard's role at Eliakim Capital reflects his conviction that transformative ventures are built at the intersection of disciplined capital, sound strategy, and mission — and that the right venture, launched well, can move entire markets and communities forward.

Focus Areas

• Venture launch, incubation & organizational design

• Capital strategy, fundraising & campaign leadership

• Turnarounds & change management for complex organizations

• Blended-value & social-enterprise venture structuring

• Fractional executive leadership for early-stage ventures

• Strategic planning & board development

• Cross-border operations & frontier-market partnerships

• Philanthropic strategy & donor/investor relations