Awele Okigbo is the founder/ CEO of Credo Advisory, a leading strategic and development communications consultancy based in Abuja and Washington, DC. Credo Advisory is a strategic and development communications firm that specialises in designing and implementing strategic, operational and tactical communications initiatives. Their services include public communications and advocacy, government relations, media relations, crisis communications, digital communications, and capacity building.
She is also the host of Credo Voices, a podcast that highlights inspiring stories of everyday heroes – ordinary people doing extraordinary things. The podcast is a growing global community of change agents driving the Sustainable Development Goals.
For over 25 years, she has led communications teams to raise awareness, build trust and effect change for institutions, including the United Nations, the United States Agency for International Development, the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As a World Bank consultant, Awele has experience working in Nigeria, Jordan, Sudan, Zambia, Poland, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania and Kazakhstan, delivering reform communications programmes. In 2012, she was appointed as a technical advisor to the Presidential Task Force on Power and, in 2020, to the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 by the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Before her consultancy work, she spent seven years with the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, supporting the launch of strategic operations in over 90 countries through communications and stakeholder engagement. In 2022, Awele was nominated and inducted into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Goalkeepers Community in recognition of being a change-maker catalysing action towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
In 2024, Awele was chosen to join a distinguished group of 50 dynamic women visionaries from around the globe as a Vital Voices Fellow. In partnership with the Estée Lauder Emerging Leaders Fund, Vital Voices Global Partnership invests in women leaders who are taking on the world’s greatest challenges – from gender-based violence to the climate crisis, economic inequities, and more.
She is a regular industry speaker and Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Thacher School.
Married with four children, Awele is an avid cyclist, a culinary enthusiast, and fluent in French. She is passionate about women’s and children’s rights.
Awele has a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in International Relations and French from Tufts University, Executive Masters in Communications Management, Strategic Communications from USI Universita della Svizzera italiana, Master’s degree in International Communications and Marketing from American University and Applied Risk Communication for the 21st Century, Communication and Media Studies certificate from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
