VALEDICTORY SPEECH, SAID BUSINESS SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, YELP CLASS OF 2022 BY TEMITOPE OMOAKHALEN ON OCTOBER 14, 2022

“Over 400 applications received, 40 applicants interviewed and only 20 chosen. You are the chosen 20”

Those were Allan’s words when classes resumed fully. When I got the mail from Oxford Foundry and FMDQ Global Partnership selecting me for the Young Entrepreneurship Leadership Programme (YELP) 2021/2022, I was beyond excited. I looked forward to gleaning wisdom from my amazing peers and the deep-valued faculty. I can?confidently say that my expectations were exceeded and not just mine but those of my colleagues as well. We were wowed! My goal here today is to make you see the beauty of our experiences through our lens because, when we say that we are humbled by our experience with the Entrepreneurship Centre at Sa?d Business School, University of Oxford , we are not flattering you. We mean it. My name is Temitope Omoakhalen fondly called TBOG but in my Fellowship, Allan Brian Ssembajjwe FCCA christened me, Temi.

“Only fools don’t change their minds”

Those were Prof Thomas Hellmann ’s words in the first class and they jolted me. Prior to this, I was in a struggle. You see, I am the co-founder of TSAGEandTBOG Consult , a wellness consulting firm. I had spent the first two years of my business presenting myself to the world as a Family Wellness Consultant, I had built contacts, a growing clientele, and was building a brand. As a company, we had been to family and youth groups, schools, and places of worship, training parents, teachers, administrators and counsellors on skills for parenting adolescents in the light of 21st-century challenges, opportunities and complexities. We had begun working with students, mentoring them to grow into wholesome adults, showing them their biological and psychological vulnerabilities and why they need to be mentored as adolescents. We had started working up partnerships with Lagos State Government with the intent to train adolescents and adolescent managers across the state. I was a Family Wellness Consultant engaging stakeholders with the aim of making the homeplace as well as the learning place a psychologically safe space for the adolescent. [I was a consultant, yes, but I received no consultancy fees]. These engagements were all self-funded, but I was happy to be making an impact. Then COVID-19 happened.

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It brought me back to the drawing board. The challenges of COVID-19 made it evident that we were running an unsustainable business model. We were offering services to non-paying clients. Though we are a for-profit consulting firm, from our business model, we could pass for an NGO. COVID made me realize that I needed to rework my business model to include paying clients that could sustain my impact-driven offerings to non-paying clients.

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Consequently, leveraging my emotionally eventful experience as an employee before I became a business owner as well as my training in physiology and emotional intelligence, we designed workplace wellness and work-life balance products for corporate organizations that can pay. In addition, we began to offer training services for corporate organizations that were faced with the difficult challenge of managing, or “parenting” as it were, a new generation of adolescent employees – the Gen Zees in the workplace.

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However, I was faced with a problem. I had built a brand as a Family Wellness Consultant. Rebranding as a Workplace Wellness Consultant became a severe struggle. This was the mental struggle I brought to YELP. Call it an identity crisis, you won’t be wrong. So, imagine your lecturer stating categorically as though he could see the struggles in your mind, “only fools don’t change their minds”. I took those suggestions to heart. I have taken ownership of who I was, who I currently am, and who I am working hard to become. I have changed my mind again and again. [I promise I’m not being reckless]. I have learned to own my decisions and embrace change if something is not working.

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From my first class till the very last, I had life-changing experiences and I do not use the word “life-changing” in a careless manner. Do I speak of Prof Edward Brooks who gave us a note of caution to remember that despite the struggles we’ll face on this journey of entrepreneurship, love is what will keep us going? Oh! did I face struggles. But each time I was ready to throw in the towel, my love for humanity kept me going. I remember this particular class because he began with Simon Sinek ’s Golden Circle. “Always know your why”, he said. I was just in the middle of writing a script for a video ad when he introduced the Golden Circle to us. I had to do a total overhaul of my script because I breached that rule – the script was all about the WHAT.

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In the very first panel session where the delectable Bolaji Sofoluwe moderated the powerful duo of Mobola da-Silva and Ayodele Olajiga , yet again I was in for another shocker. I always saw entrepreneurs as people in charge of their own time. Imagine my shock when I graduated from being a 9 to 5er to being a 7 to midnighter. My sleep cycle was getting shorter and shorter until the day that I decided to take Mondays off work to recalibrate - just chilling, spending time with the Father, and possibly catching up on movies. But, guilt was eating me up. Who takes Mondays off just to chill??I already do my best not to work on Sundays anymore so that family time is not affected but Monday is supposed to be my 'me-time' where I can think, hear my thoughts and draw inspiration for the week.?Then Madam Mobola proudly announces that she took out a sabbatical year just to chill and recalibrate. Who am I mere mortal to feel guilty for taking just one day a week to breathe? That day my guilt was dispelled. And I now help other women dispel this sort of guilt in my work-family life training packages.

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As entrepreneurs, we have days when we feel like we know the step-by-step process to execute our vision and there are other days when we feel like, “I have no idea what I am doing!” Mr Ayo Olajiga said and I quote, “on my leadership journey, I have been going through a discovery process.” I nodded my head in understanding until he said he’s been discovering for ten years, trying different things, and just evolving from one sector to the next basically doing things outside the box created by his first degree. I said to myself that day, “if someone can spend ten years and counting just to keep discovering, why do I beat myself up when I sometimes seem not to have figured some things out?”

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Or do I even begin to speak about our peer-to-peer sessions in which my colleagues come in their diversity and bring their ingenuity to the table? Again and again, it was a beauty to watch creative minds like Victor Alikor , a walking reservoir of data, Olawale Adeniyi , the tech guru and our fine picture taker, Opeyemi Awofeso , the definition of deep waters flowing in majestic silence, Onome, who is ingenuous at mental health management using fragrances,? Theresa Odey , the robotics industry player, Justice, our solution provider and finance expert, (Aliey) Abbas Abubakar , the SDG 4 advocate, Dr. Samuel Ndubuisi-Brown PMP,MBA,D.Sc.,CF.CPRMP , CEO Browncon Group time will fail me to talk about Obasanjo, Peter,?Uduak, Jude,?Chuka, Akuben, Leke, and every YELP Fellow who came together to dissect beautifully chosen topics, having healthy debates and proffering profound solutions. I have never left a peer-to-peer session without feeling full and fat!

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Our profound appreciation goes to FMDQ Group Plc without which we all won’t even be here. I must confess that prior to this, I had only ever heard of FMDQ in passing and never really taken note of this remarkable organization. It wasn’t until the interview process that I realized FMDQ’s role as a YELP funder and as positive disrupters in the Nigerian economy. One of our reading texts was titled, “Dead Aid” by Dambisa Moyo. It exposed the malignant nature of aid and the negative impact it’s had on the recipient nations. FMDQ as an SEC-registered Capital Market Holding Company was not in any way obligated to create social impact or fund YELP. They could very well have done a CSR and handed out philanthropic donations to whomever they chose but they chose a more effective route understanding that the future of the space they currently operate in can be made or marred by the quality of leaders?that emerge in the nearest future. When our stories are told - all 20 of us - FMDQ can confidently boast of having played a crucial role in our emergence.?

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To my colleagues, we have been handed wisdom far beyond our years. The onus is on us to execute and implement. A decade from now, we should all be influencers and transformative leaders in our various sectors. We should be leading with love, driven by purpose, and guided by empathy. The mind moulders that we have directly encountered?at YELP?as well as those who worked behind the scenes to make this work have poured themselves into us; they held nothing back. They were open with us and very honest. Estelle Dogbo shared her experiences with us; Watu Wamae PhD Econ , Rebecca K?nitzer , Volker, gave us practical truths and bared their hearts to us; Pierre-Jean Hanard took us on a journey, Ian Goldin and Ruth Summers held nothing back, Brent, Philip and Dr. Sangu Delle , answered personal questions when they did not have to. As a moderator per excellence, Bolaji was there to draw out wisdom from these facilitators ensuring that nothing was kept from us that would enhance us.

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I stand before you today as one with a voice but I was not always this way. I was broken, timid and very damaged. I was mentored into becoming a powerhouse by my best friend who became my business partner and then eventually my husband without whom I will not even be a Fellow today. It is why I understand that a lot of us will not even be here today without the help of friends and family who continually support our journey. We are the ones being celebrated today but these unsung heroes are our backbones and I salute every single one who made our business journey and YELP Fellowship very easy for us.

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Finally, I cannot end this talk without saluting the dynamic duo of Allan Brian Ssembajjwe FCCA and James Murray . Please oblige me, can we please give these two incredible men a standing ovation? Words fail me to describe their competence and candour. They held our hands throughout the programme. They made us look forward to classes and reached out when we needed help. When anyone calls me Temi, it just reminds me of Allan. You both made our experience something to never forget.

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Dear YELP Fellows, all of these incredible people I have mentioned today, have given us their shoulders to stand on. We cannot let them down! We will not let them down! We will not let our nation Nigeria down! We will not let our continent, Africa down! We will not let humanity down. Thank you for listening. God bless you! God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

#Leadership #FMDQ #YELP #OxfordUniversity #Valedictorian