W.E W.I.N Podcast

Send us Fan MailShielibe Abe describes herself as a public servant with a difference. She trained in microbiology, started out in a pioneer customer service role at Multichoice, and in 2004 moved into the federal civil service. She has spent the twenty-two years since at NIMASA, working across maritime labour, marine environment enforcement, training, communications and now human resources.In this conversation, Shielibe explains what being a public servant with a difference means and what it has asked of her inside a large institution for more than two decades. She talks about what a background in communications brings to HR work, and shines a bright light on the myriad of opportunities available in Nigeria’s maritime sector. She also shares what she tells younger officers about building a meaningful career in the civil service, and what she would say to a woman who cares about the work and wonders whether the system will ever move fast enough for her.For the woman building a career inside an institution and deciding how long to wait for it to catch up, this one is worth hearing.Support the show

Send us Fan MailHayley Mulenda was 18 when she reached a breaking point that nobody around her saw coming. From the outside she looked capable and composed. Inside, she was struggling in ways no one could read. She chose to take that chapter onto a stage, and she has been telling it ever since.Hayley grew up in London, the daughter of a single mother, Congolese and raised on a low income. She now advises FTSE 100 companies, the UK Cabinet Office and other global organisations on the people they overlook. In this conversation she explains the idea at the centre of her work: real models, people who show the full story behind an achievement, and why she believes they matter more than polish.She talks about what she carries from the girl she was and what she had to build along the way, what years of sharing her hardest story have asked her to protect in herself, and what she wishes someone had told her at 18.If you are the one everyone assumes is fine, this conversation is for you.Support the show

Send us Fan MailSo many capable women feel quietly anxious or behind about money—not because they lack intelligence, but because no one ever sat with them, without judgment, to build a plan for their real life. In this episode, finance coach Audrey Awuor reflects on 15 years managing donor-funded grants across Sub-Saharan Africa and why she pivoted from macro-systems to the individual woman. We unpack the emotional weight underneath financial stress, the power of indigenous tools like SACCOs and chamas, and what financial sovereignty actually looks like in practice.Support the show

Send us Fan MailMary Ng’endo spent a decade in accounting, a career she had worked hard to earn and one that was wearing her down. The way out started with a simple question about what she loved to do as a girl. The answer was speaking. Today she is a public speaking trainer, executive coach and corporate MC, and the founder of NM Consulting in Nairobi.In this conversation, Mary talks about what pulled her back to voice and communication, and what it has been like to build a practice from the ground up in the three years since. She describes what people bring into her coaching room but rarely say out loud, what shifts inside someone as they go from hesitant to confident, and what is happening for the capable woman who has plenty to say and freezes when it counts. She also shares what standing in front of a live audience as an MC has taught her that coaching never could, what leading a Rotaract club gave her, and what she knows about her own voice now that she did not know when she started.If you have ever wondered whether what you loved as a child still has a place in your working life, this conversation is for you.Support the show

Send us Fan MailAugustina Ojochenemi teaches in a classroom every day as a Teach For Nigeria Fellow. She also runs SpeakUp Omaye, a foundation working against sexual abuse and violence toward women and girls in rural Nigeria. Both jobs rest on the same question: what does it take to keep a girl safe, and to make sure she is heard? This conversation follows that question through her work.Augustina talks about her decision to bring her own story into her advocacy, and what she has come to understand about who silence serves. She describes the girls she meets in rural communities, the ones city-based campaigns rarely reach, and what daily life there makes possible or impossible to say aloud. She also explains why speaking out as an individual stopped feeling like enough, and what pushed her to build an organisation around the work.She and the host also explore how a girl's education and her safety connect, and what girls in rural Nigeria still need that current systems are not providing.If you have ever had something to say and nowhere safe to say it, this conversation is for you.Support the show

Send us Fan MailSome educators remain teachers at heart, regardless of how many titles they collect over time. Prof Sola Oni has spent decades building one of the most credentialed careers in Nigerian academia, a PhD in Information Systems, over a decade lecturing in the UK, nearly seven years as Dean at Pan-Atlantic University, a board seat at SystemSpecs, the company behind Remita and HumanManager. And through all of it, what she keeps returning to is the work of forming the people in front of her.In this conversation, Sola talks about what seven years of deanship has actually required of her, far beyond what she expected stepping into the role. She reflects on mentoring students and new faculty, and the thing she most wants them to carry with them that no syllabus can fully deliver. She speaks plainly about building a career in a field still heavily male-dominated at senior levels, and what two decades in that space have taught her about occupying it without shrinking.This is a conversation about a kind of passion for education that has mostly gone quiet in Nigerian academic life, and what it actually looks like when someone refuses to let it go quiet in her.Support the show

Send us Fan MailBrenda Lamaro grew up without much room for error. Limited resources, part-time jobs, nannying to stay in school, seasons where financial pressure could easily have pulled her somewhere else entirely. She chose civil engineering instead, a field where women are still rare across East Africa, and she is still, right now, in the middle of building both her degree and her own institution at once.That institution is Epignosis Global Academy. Brenda built it while still a student, out of a conviction she now works to pass on to other young people: that where you come from does not have to decide where you end up. In this conversation, she talks about staying anchored to herself through the hardest seasons, what it has meant to hold onto faith through doors that opened into rooms that weren't what they seemed, and what it has actually cost her to become who she is becoming.This is a conversation for the young woman with a dream she hasn't said out loud yet, about what it actually takes to build both yourself and something bigger than yourself, at the same time.Support the show

Send us Fan MailLong before Dr. Yetty Ogunnubi built one of Lagos's leading names in brand communications, she was making things with her hands, illustration, design, fashion pieces carrying her own art. Her parents were well known artists in Nigeria, and that inheritance runs through everything she built afterward, including a 2009 project where she and her uncle, the artist Lemi Ghariokwu, brought his iconic Fela Kuti cover art to life on fashion pieces for Punch Records UK. Everything she does now in brand strategy started as something closer to craft.In this conversation, Yetty traces that line from artist to strategist, and what carried over when the medium changed from paint and fabric to public perception. She talks about the moment that shifted how she occupies a room for good, being told she couldn't speak freely in a meeting she herself had organised, and the decision she made never to let that happen again. She talks about the Brand Bible, her own tool for helping people find clarity about who they are before they try to convince anyone else, and about what it took for a woman with an artist's instincts to learn the language of institutions, corporate clients, government reputation, rooms that don't naturally make space for creative thinking.This is a conversation about where power actually comes from: knowing exactly what you're worth, and refusing to let anyone talk over it.Support the show

Send us Fan MailYoung women entering the Nigerian workforce with foreign education, foreign accents, and a lack of traditional deference often face a distinct brand of scrutiny. Jolade Ademiluyi knows this reality firsthand. A Nigerian-Italian raised in both England and Nigeria, she was called to the bar at age 24. Throughout her early career, she has routinely observed older colleagues misinterpret her straightforwardness as disrespect, whereas she views it as simply being honest.In this conversation, Jolade talks about what it's like to walk into rooms where an entire generation before her has already decided what she is before she's said much of anything. She talks about carrying the weight of being the first child and first grandchild in her family, and why even being called to the bar didn't feel like enough to let herself celebrate. She's building a career in entertainment law in an industry that hasn't caught up to what she wants to do with it, working at an NGO focused on women's health, and thinking hard about a version of feminism in Nigeria she believes is being talked about the wrong way.This is a conversation about the gap between two generations of Nigerian women, and what it costs the younger one to keep showing up in it truthfully.Support the show

Send us Fan MailVal Wiggett left a stable job in South African sales and operations to teach English in Japan. She didn't plan it for years or build a case for it. She just went.Her story is defined by that recurring drive. Earlier in life, she submitted an application to train as a pilot in South Africa, during an era when female commercial pilots were virtually nonexistent. Though no one was expecting her application, she chose to submit it regardless.Val now leads career programs for the African Leadership Academy, working with young people across 47 African countries. And she talks openly about what it has meant to do that work as a white South African woman: how often the instinct to help comes wrapped in assumption, and how much of the job has actually been learning to sit still and listen before deciding what anyone needs.Spontaneity got her to Japan. The same boldness had her applying for a job that didn't want her. And somewhere in between, she learned a harder skill: knowing when to hold back and let someone else's voice fill the room.This is a conversation about a woman who has spent her life saying yes fast and listening slow.Support the show