Aku Odinkemelu, member, Monetary Policy Committee, CBN

Aku Odinkemelu is a non-executive director, board member, finance and budget committee chair, audit and risk committee member and general manager with over fifteen years of board-level experience with particular expertise in the banking, financial services, insurance, public, oil and gas, retail and education sectors.

At board level, what she does is drive corporate governance, compliance, and growth. She does this by leveraging her knowledge in finance, audit, balance sheet, P&L management, legal principles, negotiation, strategy, people management, business development, change management and organisational renewal and operating in diverse, local and international business environments. Aku successfully led and managed organisational change and renewal in three key banks, including integration needs arising from mergers and acquisition.

Currently, she is serving as an independent non-executive board member at Nord Oil APS & Energy Services. Nord Oil is an affiliate company of the Librod Energy Services group, integrated and active player in the upstream crude oil exploration and production space where it owns and operates a marginal field, midstream segment with its crude oil lifting activities and in the downstream sector where it trades petroleum products.

Odinkemelu is a board of trustees’ member at Spiritan University Nigeria, and Chair, Audit and Finance Committee at Jesuit Memorial College Port Harcourt. Other board level highlights include: Former member of the board audit and risk committee representing her organisation at the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System, and a member of the Board Credit and Risk Committees at Guaranty Trust Assurance.

In an executive capacity, as the executive director, South Directorate at Fidelity Bank, she led it to become the most profitable in the bank, contributing over 23% of the total bank profit and was a key member of the team that raised the $400m Euro bond at investor roadshows in London and the USA.

Previously, she was a general manager at Guaranty Trust Bank Plc. Here, she developed effective business planning, successfully steered her directorate out of very dire environment and socio-political upheaval challenges that totally disrupted the business, grew the business in over ten states and increased the balance sheet size to N100bn. Earlier, as the deputy general manager at Access Bank, she grew the business in the East from N200m to N2.5bn and expanded the network from one to seven branches.

Aku is a member of Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, UK, she holds a dual executive MBA from IMD Business School, Switzerland and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, China. She is also a graduate of the Advanced Management Program ( AMP 174) and Women on Boards Course of Harvard Business School Executive Education and Women in Leadership at Colombia Business School