Adesua Dozie, General Counsel, GE Africa at GE Nigeria
Adesua is an experienced General Counsel who has the experience of acting as a trusted and purpose-driven legal advisor to multinational companies operating across Africa. In her current role as General Counsel of GE Africa, she has had the opportunity to advise structure and lead transactions across the African continent, in turn facilitating regional growth, strengthening corporate governance and compliance cultures across diverse business communities, and serving as a guardian of the complex dynamics between purpose, profit and risk. She has a firm belief in the power of the General Counsel and legal teams within multinational organisations to drive robust corporate governance across Africa thereby ensuring the sustainability of business and development of the communities in which they do business. She is a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion and believes that they are important business imperatives.
Adesua is highly passionate about women’s involvement in leadership and governance. When she was 28 years old, two men she had never met before took a chance on her. William Asiko and Lawrence. In her words, “ ‘Larry’ Drake hired me as the Division Counsel for West Africa for Coca-Cola. Although I was a strong candidate, that familiar imposter syndrome began to creep in. “Why do you deserve to be here?” I thought as I compared myself to candidates who were older and likely had more qualifications. But William and Larry saw something in me that I did not see in myself: potential and drive.” She thought to herself. Soon, Adesua realized her self-doubt was misplaced, and threw herself into her new role with vigour.
The idea of women in the workplace according to Adesua is by no means foreign to Africa. However, underemployment, pay gaps, limited access to executive roles in the office, archaic work-life balance policies, and poorly-enforced labour regulations are what she says contribute to gender discrimination and marginalisation. “Trailblazing women like Nigeria’s Osaretin Afusat Demuren, chairwoman of GT Bank, and Kenya’s Susan Mboya-Kidero, President of the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, are models of female leadership. But the road towards advancing gender equity in the African workplace needs more male voices and, in particular, more male champions. More men ready to take a chance on high potential talent.” She believes.
Furthermore, for her, one way in which companies can encourage career growth of female professionals is by moving beyond mentorship and promoting sponsorship. “When my children were much younger, I recall many moments of doubt. Despite loving my job and the satisfaction it gave me, I often contemplated whether I would be better off staying home with my young children instead of navigating the delicate balancing act of work and home life. At the time, my husband encouraged me to re-allocate my responsibilities, and re-focus on my personal and professional priorities.” Adesua said.
Her former bosses, William Asiko and Michael Chabeli, also played critical roles at different important stages of her career by encouraging her to envision work-life balance from a different perspective, and challenging her to strive for more leadership roles. In this way, they acted as mentors by guiding her and as sponsors by advocating on her behalf.
As long as Adesua is concerned, the tide won’t change on a larger scale for women in the corporate world until other companies follow suit by incorporating diversity and inclusion into their strategy.
Bekeme Masade-Olowola is a well-respected sustainability and communications entrepreneur. A social entrepreneur, she is the Chief Executive of CSR-in-Action, a group made of a consulting firm, a think tank and a training institute dedicated to corporate social responsibility, policy development, advocacy, empowerment and sustainable development in the region. Under Masade-Olowola, CSR-in-Action has promoted sustainable measurement and reporting using the GRI framework, specifically, since 2011, and has catalysed the growth of sustainability adoption and transparency in the region through consulting, training and advocacy interventions.
CSR-in-Action produces the pioneer sustainability investment report in Nigeria The Collective Social Report: Nigeria (now The Corporate Sustainable Investor Report), endorsed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and supported by United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) in 2012; a first of its kind compendium which includes a rating of business sustainability performance.
CSR-in-Action is a multi-platform enterprise that creates opportunity for thought leadership in the structured development space, provides one-stop data for practitioners, match-makes cross-sectorial partners, provides training and strategic support such as event management and CSR strategy development. They also act as an advisory body to institutions on sustainability principles and corporate social responsibility ethics.
Masade-Olowola helped establish the Business Coalition for Sustainable Development Nigeria (BCSDN) in May 2014, an initiative affiliated with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), made up of a coalition of leading businesses across all sectors to drive collective development. She has engaged stakeholders throughout the economic value chain – government, business, civil society organisations and communities – and recently spearheaded the design and development of a Community Engagement Standards framework to facilitate the Federal Government agenda for promoting peace through equity in oil and gas communities in Nigeria.
She is on the board of several non-profit and for-profit organisations and is convener of the annual Sustainability in the Extractive Industries Conference, the largest development focused gathering for extractives now in its eighth year, and producer of The Good Citizen Radio Show.
“I was born, raised and still live in Lagos, Nigeria. I am a natural entrepreneur who sees opportunities everywhere. But what stands me out is that I love to find solutions for issues around me which led me to founding and currently managing CSR-in-Action, a social enterprise dedicated to promoting ethical and sustainable governance, women and youth empowerment, and sustainable development in Nigeria, through established programmes and strategic consultancy for businesses and governments. I am a writer – currently only of non-fiction such as biographies – and an editor, as well as a public relations professional” she says.
Growing up for her was fun, she had 3 siblings in the same age range and they had a mum whose primary objective was keeping them safe and happy. Her mum got them to volunteer with her Inner Wheel District 911 and that was where her passion for humanitarian work grew from.
Masade is an Emerging Leader of the Harvard Kennedy School because she has the passion to lead development. She holds a Merit in International Human Resource Management & Employment Relations (MSc) from the prestigious University of London, Queen Mary College because at the time, she thought that a HR twist to International Relations was a good path to follow.
While in the UK, she worked in project management and policy performance measurement and evaluation with the Royal Borough of Kingston and Surrey County Council where she took part in stakeholder engagement, was involved in discussions on racial mainstreaming, took part in the designing of social policy frameworks as well as mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating activities of the councils ranging from housing, environmental management, supplier management, to overall performance.
