Can you give us a brief overview of your professional background?
Having become a Chartered Accountant while I was in the University, my professional career began as an Investment Banker in Oceanic Capital after which I moved to Consulting in one of the Big 4 Consulting Firms, KPMG Professional Services, where I did the statutory audits and other advisory engagements for clients in the financial services, mostly banks and insurance companies.
I left as a Manager and moved into the investment management industry where I worked as the Group Chief Financial Officer of Coronation Group where I had oversight of multiple businesses and was instrumental in growing them into sustainable businesses. During this time, I was also involved in setting up and managing a single-family office, Tengen Family Office, that managed the assets and the affairs of the promoters of the businesses.
My work in the last fifteen years has focused on delivering cutting edge strategic transformation for businesses and creating sustainable impact and returns for all stakeholders. I now run an independent, boutique multi-family office – Genea Family Office – which provides innovative advisory services to wealthy families and enterprises, helping them to build lasting legacies and preserve their wealth for multi generations.
What does the Genea Family Office Ltd represent?
It is also a fact that most family businesses have a very short life span beyond their founder’s stage and that some 95 percent of family businesses do not survive the third generation of ownership.
This is often the consequence of a lack of preparation of the subsequent generations to handle the demands of a growing business and a much larger family. Family businesses can improve their odds of survival by setting the right governance structures in place and by starting the educational process of the subsequent generations in this area as soon as possible.
Genea Family Office was set up to support business founders and wealthy families in bringing vision of preserving your legacy to reality by providing uniquely tailored and holistic approach to wealth management to grow and preserve their wealth and develop the right succession plan and business governance framework to build long lasting and sustainable enterprises. Our services focus on Wealth Advisory, Business Advisory, Family Advisory, Estate & Tax Planning and Family Concierge services.
What would you describe as the greatest passion that has brought you this far in your career?
My greatest passion is to solve problems and create transformational solutions that help institutions to build sustainable and lasting legacies. I’m compelled by the fact that we don’t have many multi-generational businesses in Africa and I want to contribute my quota in changing that narrative. I’m a big picture thinker and I have analytical mindset; this rare combination of qualities helps me to translate my passion to the work that I do as I build my career.
Women are known for seeking ways to educate, empower and contribute to the society; can you say that the womenfolk are performing up to expectation in Nigeria?
More than ever before we’re seeing more women rising and taking up the challenge of leadership in different facets of the society in this decade.
Looking at the wealth management industry where I operate, I see more women are investing in their financial education and becoming more responsible for their financial future. They are keen on, not only managing funds at the various public and private institutional set-ups, but also in owning the funds. There is nothing small about women and therefore we are thinking big and looking at how women can have more control over their earnings and savings as well as managing and owning large amounts of funds.
How well are you able to evaluate the effects of social media, particularly on the girl-child, as a company that delivers innovative advisory services to wealthy family and enterprises?
According to research, tween girls spent an average of almost five hours using screens for entertainment per day while teen girls spent about eight hours per day in 2021 with a majority of that time spent with videos, especially on YouTube.
All this time with screen media can have a negative impact on them and due to the limited ways girls and women are often depicted in media, including TV, movies, and social media, girls’ understanding of who and what they can be is constrained and their mental health can be negatively impacted.
Girls as young as 5 start to experience increased body dissatisfaction if they are exposed to TV that focuses on appearances, and by the time they are adolescents, children have often internalized what media says about what boys and girls should look like. For girls, this can lead to self-objectification, or believing their appearance matters more than other internal qualities. This is related to lower body esteem, body shame, anxiety, and depression.
As part of our family advisory work at Genea Family Office, we focus on helping families in developing the children by providing them with holistic education that can make them responsible owners and managers of generational wealth.
What message do you have for the Nigerian women as they celebrate this year International Women’s Day?
No matter who you are, it takes guts to chase after a dream, stand up against injustice, or stick to your convictions—especially in the face of adversity or different beliefs.
True champions aren’t always the ones that win, but those with the most guts. Be courageous. Challenge orthodoxy. Stand up for what you believe in. When you are in your rocking chair talking to your grandchildren many years from now, be sure you have a good story to tell.
