Khadija Loukili, associate director at Rabo Investments, is one of our top 50 Emerging Leaders in corporate venturing for 2025.
Khadija Loukili first joined Rabo Investments – then Rabo Frontier Ventures – in 2017 as a marketing specialist. She may be focusing on investments now, but that does not mean she has lost that original talent.
“My skill is not so much in the modelling or the finance or whatever, but I am very good at storytelling – convincing our investment committee or our stakeholders within the bank on a position, and creating a vision that everyone is able to see,” she says.
Rabobank originally hired Loukili to work on its internal innovation programme, before she moved to Rabo Investments. That marketing position evolved into an analyst role shortly after, before she was promoted to investment associate and tasked with reshaping a fund-of-funds strategy for Rabo Investments that now includes commitments to more than 10 funds.
“Making an investment that has an impact on our day-to-day customers, on our businesses or our infrastructure is still one of our greatest goals”
Loukili volunteers in her spare time, helping people who are struggling with their finances. That experience forms part of what motivates her in her work. “There are innovations within finance that can help our society,” she says – in both personal finance and in preventing financial crime.
“So, making an investment that has an impact on our day-to-day customers, on our businesses or our infrastructure is still one of our greatest goals, even though fintech is not the most exciting technology right now.”
And while Rabobank, a 130-year-old agricultural bank, may be co-operatively minded, it is not necessarily the most exciting institution either. But Loukili wants to change that, by bringing outside technologies she sees through startups and funds into the day-to-day banking and finance parts of the firm.
“There is another world out there. There are technologies, trends and things that are way beyond what we are doing within the bank,” she says. “Getting people to see that and getting them on that mission is what we are actually doing.”
See the full list of Emerging Leaders 2025 here.
