A chartered accountant by profession, ‘Oby’ Ezekwesili first served the Nigerian government as Head of the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit, where she led reforms to public procurement. She was appointed Minister of Solid Minerals in 2005 and chaired the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. In 2006 she became Minister of Education, until taking up her World Bank post in 2007. Prior to working for the Government of Nigeria, Dr Ezekwesili was at the Center for International Development at Harvard University. Having co-founded the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International, she directed its work in Africa. She is also a Senior Economic Advisor to Open Society, which aims to build vibrant and tolerant societies with democratically accountable governments. Dr Ezekwesili holds a Master’s degree in International Law and Diplomacy from the University of Lagos, and a Master’s in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Agriculture in Abeokuta in 2012.

She has multi sector experience and has worked extensively in the areas of ; Organisation Review and Restructuring, HR Transformation, Culture and Change Management, HR Measurements and Benchmarking , HR Function Effectiveness, Mergers and Acquisition, Talent Management and Competency Development for a wide array of clients within the public and private sectors.

Her areas of expertise within the Human Capital realm include; HR Analytics, Organisation Design, Employee Performance Management, Reward Strategy and Execution, Project Management as well as Learning and Development.

Lola is also a certified project manager, global HR practitioner and change management specialist.

Yemi also provides executive mentoring to mid-career and business leaders, who are looking to excel in their career journey and become pivotal in the transformation of their unit, department, function and/or organisation. Given that what brought individuals and organisations to where we are today will not take us farther, he works with business managers and leaders to focus on end-to-end people management, culture and leadership initiatives to meet the demands of the Now of Work.

Yemi was a two-term Elected Council Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) and has received a number of global recognitions such as Top 501 Most Fabulous Global HR Leader, Top 150 Global HR Influencer, Top 8 HR Thought Leader in Africa, Top 50 Personality on LinkedIn, Top 3 Africa HR Influencer, Top 200 2021 Global Thought Leader, Top 10 2021 Global Leadership Development Thought Leader, Top 122 CHRO in 2022 and 2022 Top 200 Voices in Leadership.

He is the Founder of The YF Network (TYFN). TYFN is a personal, leadership and business development forum of about 200 professionals and entrepreneurs with members across 9 countries and 3 continents. He is also the Founder of The YF Academy (TYFA), with the sole aim of lighting candles behind us, so others can easily find their paths to success and purpose.

Yemi is an author of 2 e-books and he loves Mondays!