Panel -- Women in Control
| Panel Summary: The Women in Control Business panel will feature successful African women business leaders who have made a difference in their business and local communities by creating opportunities in their countries and raising their countries’ profile by attracting international investors. These successful women have worked in fields that include manufacturing, horticulture, investment banking and venture capital among others. The panel will focus on how the panelists were able to gain control of their companies and on the challenges currently faced by female business leaders in Africa. |
 Bunmi LawsonManaging Director/Chief Executive Officer ACCION Microfinance Bank Limited |
|
Mrs. Bunmi Lawson is the pioneer Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of ACCION Microfinance Bank Limited. ACCION Microfinance Bank was established by a group of highly successful banks, local and international investors namely; ACCION International, Citigroup, Ecobank, International Finance Corporation, SME Managers and Zenith Bank. Mrs. Lawson holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration from the IESE Business School, University of Nevera and is an alumni of the Lagos Business School. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and has attended several courses both locally and internationally at renowned institutions including Harvard Business School and INSEAD. She has presented several lectures locally and internationally in areas of capacity building for small scale industries and young entrepreneurs, SME Financing, Microfinance and has been part of special workgroups on various topics bothering on several aspects of the economy. Prior to joining ACCION, Bunmi was a co-owner and Executive Director of VLA Lawrence & Associates, a leading Human Resources services organization; the Executive Director of FATE Foundation Ltd/Gte, a leading business development service provider, and has over 18 years experience in finance, insurance, marketing and auditing. She is happily married with children. |
|
|
|
Lola heads the Corporate Finance & Advisory team at Zenith Capital, the investment banking subsidiary of Zenith Bank Plc – Nigeria’s largest company by market capitalization. She began her career at General Electric in London, subsequently working at GE Capital before moving to JP Morgan. She returned to Nigeria in 2002 with ARM Investment Managers – a specialist investment bank, before joining Zenith Capital in 2007. Through creative financial advice, Lola has helped to structure and raise financing for clients in a variety of sectors - she has advised the concessionaire on the first public-private-partnership (“PPP”) on toll roads in Nigeria and is currently leading the Zenith Capital advisory team on the first privately built airport in Nigeria, as well as advising on the acquisition and turnaround of one of the country’s largest power generation plants. Lola holds a BA in Economics and an MA in Information Technology from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. |
 Simi Sanni Nwogugu Co-founder and CEO 2Hats Network |
| Simi Sanni Nwogugu is co-founder and CEO of 2Hats Network, which provides career coaching, business training and networking support services to professional women with important family obligations. The mission of 2Hats is to help professional women achieve their best at work and at home. 2Hats designs customized leadership programs for Fortune 500 companies interested in recruiting, developing and retaining high-performing women. Simi was most recently Senior Director, Strategy and Business Development at MTV Networks Kids and Family Group, where she supported senior management in the development and execution of long-range strategy and plans for all lines of businesses (cable networks, online, magazines, recreation centers and consumer products). She left in July 2006 to spend some time at home with her family and develop the business plan for 2Hats. She joined MTV Networks after receiving her MBA from Harvard Business School, where she learned how to bring all her passions together under the umbrella of business without compromising her values. Prior to business school, Simi founded Junior Achievement of Nigeria in partnership with top corporations in Nigeria and created an award-winning education non-profit that has become a model for other non-profits in Nigeria. Prior to moving to Nigeria, Simi was an investment banker in the Communications, Media and Entertainment Group at Goldman Sachs, where she worked on several corporate finance and advisory projects for Fortune 500 companies in the US and abroad. She received a B.A. in Economics and English with High Honors from Mount Holyoke College, where she developed the passion for helping women and children, and is a member coach with the International Coach Federation. She is currently researching and writing a book that focuses on the retention and advancement of women of color in the workplace. Simi is married with two young sons who teach her everyday how to be a better person. |
 Celine Loader Group Brand & Communications Director United Bank of Africa (UBA) Plc. |
|
Celine Loader is the Group Brand & Communications Director of Nigeria’s and West Africa’s largest financial services provider, the United Bank of Africa (UBA) Plc. The former Managing Director of Aspire Media Ltd, the UK-based publisher of the international glossy ASPIRE Magazine, comes with extensive marketing and media experience, partly gained from Microsoft Corporation, where she worked for eight years in various roles, including Regional Product Marketing Manager for Africa, Middle East & Mediterranean. She joined a crack team of professionals from diverse backgrounds, challenged to drive UBA Group’s post-merger growth strategies and global expansion. In her role, Mrs. Loader oversees the development and execution of the Group’s Brand Strategy by driving an integrated marketing and communications to support the Group’s vision to become the number one financial services institution in Africa and Africa’s global bank. Mrs Loader holds a Masters Degree (M.Sc.) in Development Economics from the University of Reading, United Kingdom. She worked for the software giant Microsoft from 1990-1998, holding various roles, including Strategic Planner, Market/Business Analyst, Internal Communications Manager (Microsoft UK) and Regional Product Marketing Manager (Microsoft Africa & Middle East). On the rise as a marketing executive, Loader took a break from the corporate world to be a full-time stay-at-home mother to her young children, after which she became Company Director of her own business, Aspire Media Limited in 2003, and launched the international glossy magazine ASPIRE. She now works with UBA Plc as the Brand and Communications Director. |
 Stephanie DeckerHarvard-Newcomen Fellow in Business History Harvard Business School |
| Stephanie Decker is the Harvard-Newcomen Fellow in Business History in 2007/08. She holds degrees from the University of Cologne in Germany and the University of Liverpool in the UK. She has held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the London School of Economics, and most recently taught international business at the Management School of the University of Liverpool. She is now writing a book based on her doctoral dissertation which explores the impact of decolonization and rising economic nationalism on British multinationals in Ghana and Nigeria, for which she received the 2007 Coleman Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in business history by the Association of Business Historians. She has also been shortlisted for the Kroos Prize from the Business History Conference in the USA. The book explores how companies dealt with political pressure to localize and decentralize their operations, as well as their responses to expropriation. |
Lola Akinleye