by admin | Mar 22, 2022 | BOARD OF ADVISORS
Dr. Queen Blessing Itua is a renowned leader and a recipient of the President Obama Lifetime award for Excellence in Service. She is an advocate for gender and community development, a public health practitioner, specialist in preventive wellness. Queen Blessing established Global Empowerment Movement to serve the underprivileged as she provides leadership to women, youths, and families.
The Founder’s Mission for Africa
Dr. Queen Blessing’s mission is to promote Africa, change Africa, enrich and transform Africa into an ideal place to live, visit, invest, and do business, and to create wealth by providing technical training and employment of the locals for a safe and prosperous Africa.
How It All Started
It all started with Dr. Queen Blessing’s sincere appreciation of knowing who she is as an Authentic African Royal and her innate desire to fulfilling God’s purpose for creating her to be a Blessing. She knows that she is Blessing, African Royal dedicated to fulfilling God’s purpose and leaving a legacy. She is super excited about transforming Africa, the motherland.
With her extensive global alliance network, she brings to Africa the Expertise, Investors and Funding for investments, engineering and management from concept to reality. Queen Blessing believes that the investors should not just make money in Africa and leave but be held the accountable to train and hire local workers and to contribute a portion of their profit to local education programs.
Her commitment to inspiring others to personal transformation necessary for reaching crowning potential ignited her passion to creating the “Unlocking the Blessing Code” series: Self-Economic Education (SEE) and “Be A Blessing” – “Dignifying the Needy with Our Surplus” Mindset Makeover programs for everyone aimed at Poverty and Human Trafficking prevention, reduction, intervention and eradication.
Dr. Queen Blessing has been a strong advocate for issues affecting African Immigrants in the state of Georgia. For years, Dr. Queen Blessing has coordinated Africans in the Diaspora: Our Voices Matter. Dr. Queen Blessing is the Executive Coordinator of the African Diaspora Day for “A Taste of Africa” at the Georgia State Capitol building co-hosted by Her Excellency, Senator Donzella James, to showcase the rich heritage and culture of the African diaspora. The aforementioned event provides a glimpse of Dr. Queen Blessing’s vision for the African Center in the Atlanta Metropolitan area.
Dr. Queen Blessing’s book: “We Are The Blessings of Africa, Reshaping Our Greatness Together” Get Book
Dr. Queen Blessing is also the author of Georgia State Senate Resolution 381. Download Here
by admin | Mar 22, 2022 | BOARD OF ADVISORS
Leonard Stanley Chaikind – Born in Hartford, CT at the Saint Francis Hospital; Morley Elementary School, Alfred Plant Junior High School, Loomis Institute, Harvard University; The United States Navy; HBS; Shell Oil Company, Royal Dutch Shell; Institutional Investors Consulting Company and the BW Better World Foundation – dated 1/5/2019.
Leonard Stanley Chaikind was born on July 15, 1931 in Hartford, CT. He is currently 87 years young and is the Chairman & CEO of Institutional Investors Consulting Company or IICC, located in Houston, Texas. Mr. Chaikind has served in this capacity since he founded IICC in the early 1990’s. Recently, IICC has begun to establish a new Foundation which is called the BW Better World Foundation or BWBWF for short – the foundation website is www.bwbwf.org. IICC’s website is www.iicchome.com. Both web sites need to be updated, which will be done in the first quarter of 2019.
Previous Employment – Prior to founding IICC, Mr. Chaikind worked for Royal Dutch Shell and the Shell Oil Company for over 35 years in a wide variety of assignments. After serving in many senior roles, including the Finance Manager for both Shell Chemical and Shell Oil Products, he moved to the Royal Dutch Shell headquarters in London in 1977.
During his time in London, he accomplished many things – headed up a group that evaluated Shell’s position in Turkey, helped coordinate some very large multi-billion dollar projects for Royal Dutch Shell in Australia, Saudi Arabia and other key countries in the Far East. In 1978 he was appointed to the position of Regional Treasurer for all Royal Dutch Shell’s operations in the Far East and Australasia (still working out of Shell’s office in London}. In this capacity, Mr. Chaikind was responsible for negotiating and financing well over $50 billion dollars in both corporate and major project activities though out this region. He also developed a number or very important relationships with both key government officials and financial institutions, e.g. banks, investment banks and countries, e.g. Brunei, China, Yemen, France, Switzerland, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia. In late 1981, he returned to Houston to continue his career with Shell Oil Company.
His final assignment for Shell was as the Administrator of the various $12 plus billion dollars Shell Savings and Retirement Programs with responsibility for both the investment and administration of 4 major funds. About 30% of these funds were managed internally under the guidance of Mr. Chaikind and his staff with the rest being outsourced to various investment managers and consulting groups. During this period, the Institutional Investment industry recognized the Shell Funds to be one of the very best. During his years in this assignment, Mr. Chaikind was also very active in the tax-exempt industry. He was one of the key founders of the Committee on Investment of Employee Benefit Assets (CIEBA), the largest ever Corporate Pension Fund Group in the world. Len served as Vice Chairman of this group from its beginning until his retirement from Shell. He also served as an active member of both the NYSE Institutional Investors Advisory Committee and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Advisory Board (the CFTC is to the futures and derivatives industry what the SEC is to securities industry). Most important, he was very much responsible for bringing the concept of Private Equity Funds into the Institutional Investors market. This is a very important strength of IICC, i.e. knowledge needed to
set up and structure Private Equity Funds. Some people still call Len Chaikind “the father of private equity funds.”
During his many years with Shell Oil and Royal Dutch Shell, Len Chaikind (he prefers to be called Len) made many great connections in various governmental agencies, e.g. Turkey, Yemen, China, Russia, USA, India, Saudi Arabia, Africa (e.g. Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa) etc. etc.
with some of the major corporations and some of the wealthiest people in the world. These connections have become very valuable for IICC.
Since his retirement from Shell, Mr. Chaikind has stayed very active in the whole area of tax-exempt funds (including health care, Pension Plans, and Social Security reforms) and still maintains a strong presence in Washington, DC.
Other Activities – In addition to his job as the CEO of IICC, Mr. Chaikind also sits on the Boards of several both “For Profit” and “Not for Profit” groups.
Military Service – From 1953 to 1956 Mr. Chaikind served in the U.S. Navy (LTSG) as a line officer in the Pacific Amphibious Fleet (Phibpac) on various assignments both in the Far East and the West Coast of North America.
Education – MBA, Harvard Business School in 1958, BA Harvard University in Economics in 1953 and endless courses at places like NYU, CCNY, Columbia, The New School for Social Research, and the US Navy. Prior to all this, Mr. Chaikind was a graduate in 1949 of the Loomis Institute, which is in Windsor, CT.
Family – Fantastic – married for 60 years – two great children (both doctors, sadly one deceased) and 4 wonderful grandchildren (the oldest who just graduated from Medical School and is now doing his residency).
lsc-1/1/19
Back to IICC – with comments by Len Chaikind
To start with, it should be carefully noted that IICC today is not a broker-dealer; it is, however, many other things – a holding company, a “do good” investment bank and a consulting / investment advisory group.
In the early days of IICC, we focused primarily on the consulting area with both Shell Oil and various Royal Dutch Shell companies as our initial clients. Given my background with Royal Dutch Shell and as the head of various Shell Pension and Benefit Plans, we had many, many requests to work with major Pension Plans, e.g. The Shell and GE Pension Plans, Foundations, e.g. the Ford Foundation, Endowment Funds, e.g. the Harvard Endowment Fund and Family Offices, e.g. the McNair Group. Today these groups only in the United States represent trillions of dollars.
Then in the mid 90’s, IICC moved into the brokerage / investment banking area – all of this was
done under a wholly owned subsidiary called IICC Tradeco. At one point, we had 4 offices in
various cities with the headquarters in New York City. Tradeco also had a very active relationship
with a floor broker on the NYSE and together, we changed the whole concept of institutional
trading and at the same time helped to significantly lower their trading costs. Sometime in the late
90’s, Tradeco moved the headquarters to Houston, where IICC – the parent company – also
resided. In addition to doing a lively brokerage business, Tradeco (largely using the amazing
relationships I had built up over my years at Shell), raised well over a billion dollars – partly for
specific companies, but mostly for Private Equity Funds. It should be pointed out at this point,
that many groups / people regard me as the “father of private equity funds” due to my long
experience with Shell. This is another long story that I won’t get into at this time.
I won’t get into this at this point, but it should be noted that while I was involved in a number of
other areas, Tradeco not only made many millions of dollars, but also made some mistakes
which cost it even more millions of dollars. During this period, I spent a great deal of my time
in other areas (like many not for profit groups that, while very good for humanity, did not
generate any income for the company. I did, however, find these projects to be of great interest.
Our Parent Company – IICC’s core mission during this period was – to “help and assist
institutional tax-exempt funds and High Net Worth Families, e.g. Pension Plans,
Foundations, Endowment Funds and Family Offices, to manage themselves as efficient
and cost-effective organizations,” particularly regarding specific investments and investment
strategies. Now IICC provides “free” advisory / consulting services to the Institutional
Investors constituency. IICC’s primary focus in this area is to help these groups improve their
investment performance by better understanding and performing particularly with private (non-
traditional) investments. To accomplish this objective, IICC has held 9 Conferences and over 50
Workshops in the past 20 years, all with the objective of educating tax-exempt funds and family
offices in the areas of investments, risk controls and administration. Although we did a great deal
of good during this period, on a consolidated basis, we also ended up losing a great deal of
money, mostly my own, since I and my family owned about 95% of IICC. In 2008 / 2010, we
closed all our offices. Today, I work out of my wife’s office at 2600 South Gessner, Houston,
Texas.
Over the past 4 or 5 years, IICC has evolved to a much broader mission: “to make the world a better place to live.” Starting this year – 2018 – it has also committed to donate 25% of
its (meaning IICC’s) annual pre-tax profits to the BW Better World Foundation. Currently IICC’s income / profits will comes from consulting fees and ownership positions in various client companies, but mostly from its ownership positions in Private Equity Funds. Part of IICC’s long term strategy is that it will go public in about 5 years.
Current Activities – Given Len Chaikind’s extensive global background both in the Oil and Gas Industry and in managing all of Shell’s Benefit Plans and starting the whole concept of Private Investments, IICC is now heavily involved in these area plus various traditional and non-traditional / alternative energy areas and some Private Equity Funds. It also plans to work closely with several countries in Africa starting with Nigeria (as a showcase country) in what is called the Public / Private arena.
Under its new strategy, IICC’s primary focus / clients / relationships will be 1 – Private Equity Funds, 2 – Charities and Foundations and 3 – Specially chosen Projects and Companies.
Once more, IICC’s overall vision is “to make the world a better place to live.” In doing this, IICC supports several “not-for-profit” groups, some of which are listed in its web site which is (www.iicchome.com). As can be seen from browsing the site, IICC also has involvements in many countries in Africa, India, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America (including the Caribbean). In summary, we like to think of IICC as a kind of “do good” and highly entrepreneurial investment / merchant bank.
It should also be clearly noted that IICC is not only me – Len Chaikind, but that we have many highly qualified people working with us all over the world. Seven key people working with IICC are 1 – Robert Wooden and 2 – Nalin Pillai, both Senior Managing Directors of IICC; 3 – Syed Hashimi and 4 – Howard Helfgott, both Managing Directors and 5th and 6th, but not least Renee Shull and Jim Johnson, all with their own special skills. Further, we have many other
wonderful people – Managing Directors, Associates and members of our Advisory Board who are also working with us – too many to even list. However, I did want to at least mention some of them.
In addition to several great projects in various countries, IICC is currently planning over the next two years (2019 and 2020) to start 4 new Private Equity Funds – each being from $100 to $500 million dollars – in the areas of real estate, entertainment / media, and energy. The first fund will be the India Endowment Fund (IEF) – $100 million and is ready to go; when this fund is completed, our plan is to do another IEF Fund for $500 million dollar. The second Fund is the Entertainment and Media Fund – $250 million and the third will be called the Better World Fund
– also $250 million. While the purpose of these funds all have a humanistic orientation, IICC still expects the overall return to investors (mostly institutional) to be better than 20% IRR. Very recently after meeting and being excited about working with a young woman from Nigeria, one of
our team members came up with the idea of doing another $500 million Fund – called the Nigerian Endowment Fund, focused on projects to make “Nigeria a better place to live.”
In terms of specific Projects, our number one “for profit” is called Elixir Entertainment / The Lebanon Projects and the second are the two Private Equity Funds noted above. Three other very important projects to IICC are a Solar Company in India, another one called Holistic Solar Holdings Inc. in New Jersey and a special coal / environmental project, all which can be discussed in much greater detail.
Other than the BW Better World Foundation, three other charities / foundations are: The Global PTSI Foundation, The Detroit Music Hall of Fame and The General Claire L. Chennault Foundation.
IICC is also involved in various infrastructure projects in Africa (starting with a Modular Refinery in Nigeria – which hopefully will become a very large integrated oil company in the future).
Another Project that IICC is working on (agreements are not yet in place) is with an amazing company headquartered in the UAE, which focus is the whole area of film, TV, Entertainment, starting in Southern India. If all goes as planned this company could also control as many as 10,000 media screens within the next 5 years.
One never knows what all the new activities IICC will become involved with in 2019 and 2020. One of the most interesting projects connects with its mission is some very important projects in Lebanon in the whole arts, media and entertainment area with a clear focus on “peace and stability in the Middle East,” and another has to do with coal, the environment and jobs.
Finally, IICC’s long term strategy is “to go public prior to the end of 2024.” At that time, the largest shareholder in IICC will be the BW Better World Foundation, since by then, Len Chaikind and his family will have donated 80% plus of their holdings in IICC to the BWBWF.
Web sites – www.bwbwf.org and www.iicchome.com Cell Phone – 713-824-6051
Email – ceoiicc@gmail.com
1/5/2019 – lsc