Tara Fela-Durotoye
With over 5,600 beauty representatives around the country and 19 makeup studios, Tara Fela-Durotoye blazed the trail in the makeup industry in Nigeria.
She made the art and business of makeup appealing,
leading the way for the over 3,500 makeup graduates from her makeup academy, the first there was in the country.
She continues to blaze the beauty industry with her line of beauty products ranging from lip pencils, to foundations and eye shadow palletes named in various Nigerian dialects.
She is passionate about female entrepreneurship and empowers young women through her Tara Orekelewa Beauty Representatives’ programme.
Mo Abudu
From building a thriving media empire to unrelenting philanthropy, Mo Abudu has carved a niche for herself and continues to inspire others. The creation of Ebonylife TV in 2013 made Mo Abudu the first African woman to launch a Pan-African TV channel.
With recording studios located in Tinapa, Calabar and Ilupeju Lagos, Mo Abudu has impacted the careers of Nigerians in media. She is also a co-owner of Protea Hotel, Oakwood Park and the founder of Vic Lawrence & Associates, a media industry leader in outsourcing.
Read also:https://businessday.ng/life-arts/article/celebrating-the-international-womens-day-2019/
Ola Orekunrin
Have a medical emergency that needs someone flown to a specialist hospital in any part of the country for urgent medical treatment? Flying Doctors Nigeria is the first and only 24 hour national air ambulance in West Africa.
And the founder is a woman! Ola started off this venture as a paediatric air ambulance transporting sick kids from one place to another.
Employing both jets and helicopters and with a response time of 20-30 minutes at most, the team is made up of physicians only and life-saving procedures could be carried out enroute the destination hospital.
Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola
Bilikiss’s passion for the environment brought her back from a job at IBM outside the shores of the country to found a recycling and waste management company.
WeCyclers, her company collects recyclable household waste like plastic bottles, aluminium cans rewarding these households with redeemable points based on the volume they supply while feeding the local recycling industries with such materials.
As the foremost recycling company in Nigeria, Bilikiss seeks to engage the environments where they are present in to generate wealth and employment for indigenes and seeks to take WeCyclers beyond the shores of the country.
Ndidi Nwuneli
Ndidi is the founder of Leadership, Effectiveness, Accountability, Professionalism Africa (LEAP Africa), a non-profit organization inspiring, empowering and equipping startups and social entrepreneurs for personal and collective transformation. Her other non-profit, Ndu Ike Akunuba (meaning Life, Strength and Wealth) is geared towards empowering women and equipping them for a better and healthier life.
Together with her husband, she is also the co-founder of Sahel Capital and AACE Foods, a manufacturing/ agricultural consulting firm and a food processing and distribution firm respectively. In August 2015, AACE Foods launched a Feed the Children Fund via crowd funding to raise resources to feed at least 2,500 internally displaced children for a period of three months.
Bolanle Austen Peters
Bolanle Austen Peters gave Nigerian theatre a face-lift. Her media outfit, BAP Production has put out 2 world class theatre productions, Wakaa the Musical and Saro.
For years, she worked on programmes in conjunction with the United Nations practicing as a trained legal professional. In 2003, Bolanle Austen Peters spearheaded the opening of Terrakulture, a focal point for arts and culture in Nigeria. From this outfit and her production company, she has created hundreds of jobs on a monthly basis alongside 60 staff in her employment.
Lola Shoneyin
The acclaimed author of The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, Lola Shoneyin is one of Africa’s literary superstars. Apart from being known as a poet and novelist, she is the creator of one of Africa’s biggest literary festivals, Ake Arts & Book Festival held annuals in Abeokuta, Ogun State. This festival pulls authors, artists, musicians, and literary lovers from all over the world and is organized by The Book Buzz Foundation.
Tiyan Alile
Meet the founder of the first culinary school in Nigeria, Tiyan Alile. She trained at the L’Academie de Cuisine in the United States and returned to Nigeria to start and mentor at The Culinary Academy of Nigeria.
Tiyan Alile wears the executive chef hat at the newly opened fine dining restaurant, Tarragon and is the current president of The Culinary Arts Practitioners Association. The Fiesta of Flavors, Souk, a classy indoor food fair is another creation of culinary innovator.
Mosunmola Umoru
Here is a young entrepreneur who is bringing some sass to the farm land. Having started a cookie and cake business as an undergraduate, she went on to sell processed food after graduation.
Today, her company Honeysuckels PTL Ventures has its own farm, ponds and runs a food delivery service. Passionate about solving the issue of unemployment, she organizes mentorship programmes for undergraduates teaching them nuggets of wisdom for succeeding in business.
Uche Pedro
Originally starting out as the curator of lifestyle and happenings in Nigeria, Uche Pedro has grown her blog into a website, Bellanaija.com that inspires on a worldwide scale.
Her work on creating a forum for lovers of inspiring and informative entertainment news resonates with hundreds of thousands daily.
Founders Creative is one of the ways she has chosen to give back. Still in its early stages, this initiative is a roundtable discussion for young entrepreneurs in Nigeria to “connect, share, ideate, learn, collaborate, and grow.”
