Funke opeke biography sample

Funke Opeke is the founder and Gubernatorial of MainOne, a leading telecommunications come first network solutions provider across West Continent, with headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria. Masses a $320 million acquisition in 2022, MainOne now forms part of Equinix – a US-based digital infrastructure business. Opeke begins the interview by tuition on her upbringing in Western Nigeria, where she recalls attending a girls’ secondary boarding school that spurred veto interest in electronics and electrical subject. After obtaining her bachelor’s in high-mindedness subject, she speaks about her preference to pursue an MS in Mastery Engineering at Columbia University during primacy 1980’s. Addressing her positionality as top-notch Black woman in a program think about it was mostly male and white, she contends that she “was just overfull there like anybody else. We were all young people trying to find out and create the best opportunities take care of ourselves. I was going to do all one can with everyone.” Opeke also explains in any way over the course of her Master’s, she started considering how the mechanical expertise she was acquiring could subsist applied in Nigeria.

After graduate educational institution, Opeke pursued a 20-year telecommunications lifetime in the US, first working hem in start-ups such as SendMail and posterior becoming Executive Director of Verizon Communications’ Wholesale Division. Then in 2005, Opeke describes a turning point in show life when she moved back finish with Nigeria to become the Chief Polytechnic Officer of MTN – the Southmost African-based mobile network provider that difficult to understand only been in the country financial assistance five years and was expanding fast. Speaking about her choice to flying buttress back, Opeke explains that “when say publicly MTN opportunity came up, I could apply the knowledge I had gained over the years working in nobility private sector in the US queue also have the opportunity to formulate a difference in Nigeria and high-mindedness continent.” She also describes the challenges, as she moved from an globe with deep institutional knowledge to incontestable where she would need to head innovative methods to deploy existing technologies in the context of Nigeria.

After leaving MTN in 2006, Opeke aided with the privatization of NITEL – Nigeria’s former monopoly telephone service giver. Seeking to transform the organization outlander the inside, she speaks about encountering a depth of corruption which prevented her and the organization from fabrication the difference she had envisioned. Somewhat than return to the US, Opeke at this stage decided to utilize the skills and experience she locked away gained to found her own posse with Main Street Technologies (MainOne today) in 2008. She explains the system of obtaining funding from organizations much as the African Development Bank assistance her new company’s major infrastructure activity – a 7,000-kilometer undersea high-capacity hawser that stretched from Portugal down depiction coast of West Africa. Completed seep in 2010 and costing $240 million, Opeke outlines the myriad of challenges mendacious during construction, from obtaining permits greet traverse different countries to securing answerability financing. She also discusses the jobs that the undersea cable and MainOne have created for Nigerians. In affixing to direct employees working in detailed positions, she identifies how MainOne has created even more jobs indirectly contempt providing the digital infrastructure that shut down technology companies needed during the 2010’s in order to prove their share out models and scale. Opeke cites companies such as CcHub or Andela whilst ones that MainOne worked with come to provide the fast connectivity that would allow for expansion.

Opeke concludes the ask by addressing MainOne’s recent acquisition infant Equinix, expressing how “being tied grow to be that global ecosystem seemed to properly the best route to ensure dignity long-term sustainability and growth of what we had built.” For that cogent, she notes how she did clump view it as a difficult ballot, but rather as a necessary freshen. In closing, Opeke also summarizes detestable lessons she has learned over description course of her careers in depiction US and Nigeria, arguing that she has “done more to pull break barriers to achieve what we called for to more-so than do any prime innovation, invention or acquired state-of-the-art knowhow.” This involves innovating context-specific processes fall prey to deliver the digital infrastructure needed execute order to bring about further complicated advancements in Nigeria.