We still cannot get over Ada Osakwe’s commencement address to the 2020 class at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
Ada, an alumna of the Kellogg School of Management, where she earned an MBA, is a food investor, entrepreneur, and founder of The Nuli Juice Company- a restaurant chain in Nigeria. She has become the first ever African to deliver a commencement address at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
Ada first worked as an investment banker with BNP Paribas in London. She then worked as a Senior Investment Officer at the African Development Bank (AfDB), for four years. Later, she served as vice-president at Kuramo Capital Management, a private equity company based in New York City.
She had worked with the Nigerian Ministry of Agriculture and founded Agrolay Ventures. She also founded Nuli Juice. In 2017, she was appointed to the board of One Acre Fund, a Kenya-based financial and educational NGO that serves small-scale farmers in Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
It was not surprising that she was named among the “Twenty Youngest Power Women in Africa 2014” by Forbes Magazine.
Even with her career experience, Ada still had not so great moments when she decided to delve into entrepreneurship. Addressing the class, she said:
Friends disappeared overnight, and my phone wasn’t ringing anymore. It was a difficult time as I felt I had to prove my professional capabilities to people all over again and rebuild my entire private-sector career from scratch. Thinking back, it was just what was needed to motivate me to make sure my start-up, Nuli, became the fastest-growing beverage brand and fast-casual restaurant chain in Nigeria.
Watch full speech here:
