About
Also known as Abosede Alimi George-Ogan · Abosede Alimi
I shift the norms and build the systems that make women's leadership inevitable in Africa.
Abosede George-Ogan
WILAN
She searched for guidance on how to run for office as a woman in Nigeria. She found almost nothing - no map, no roadmap, no system designed to help women decide, prepare, and run. That absence became the blueprint. Today she is not filling gaps; she is shaping what comes next.
Career
She began at ActionAid International Nigeria. That first chapter taught her that good intentions without structural change produce cycles, not progress - and that the story told about a community shapes what that community believes is possible for itself.
She moved into the private sector - leading CSR and sustainability at Keystone Bank, FirstBank Nigeria, and Samsung Electronics West Africa, managing digital village projects, smart schools, scholarships, and employability programmes across West Africa. Each institution taught her how a corporate system creates or closes opportunity - and how narrative is used to manage what people believe about who belongs in which roles.
She joined the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund as Pioneer Director of Strategy, Funding and Stakeholder Management - contributing to job creation in Africa's largest city by population. Working from inside a government institution, she saw at close range how policy is made, how stakeholders are managed, and how the gap between a commitment on paper and an outcome in the community is almost always a systems problem.
She searched for guidance on how to run for office as a woman in Nigeria. She found almost nothing. That absence became the blueprint. She created WomeninPoliticsNG (2017), then WILAN Global (2018). She co-founded ElectHER (2019-2021) and built the Agender35 model, raising $2 million at launch toward a $10 million target. She created and hosted The Leading Woman Show - 103 million views, four seasons, 52 episodes, broadcast nationally and streaming globally. She wrote a 13-episode column in BusinessDay Nigeria. She launched MsRepresented. In 2025 she published the State of Women's Leadership Report - finding that women hold 4.5% of Nigeria's National Assembly seats against a global average of 27.2%. She is also the author of Building a Conscious Career.
In 2026 she launched the WILAN Suite - Biird, MyDreamGov, and the Learn App - digital tools designed for behaviour change, not just engagement. The decision to build them came from the same place as every other decision she has made: she needed something that did not exist. So she built it.
Credentials
She holds a Master in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School as an Edward S. Mason Fellow - where she won the Josephine Vernon Award as the most outstanding fellow in her cohort - and an MSc in Communication for Innovation and Development from the University of Reading. She is a 2024 Eisenhower Fellow and a Vital Voices VV Engage Fellow. She has spoken at the Reykjavik Global Forum, the Skoll World Forum at Oxford, the WomenLift Health Global Conference, the UN General Assembly, the Harvard Kennedy School Women in Power Conference, and the Elevate Africa Convening in Botswana.
MPA Master in Public Administration
Harvard Kennedy School, USA
MSc Communication for Innovation & Development
University of Reading, United Kingdom
BSc Political Science / Public Administration
Igbinedion University, Nigeria
UN Commission on the Status of Women, CSW70
Books
Published
Abosede George-Ogan
Available on Amazon.
Forthcoming
Abosede George-Ogan
Details to follow.
Recognition
WILAN
Founded in 2018, WILAN Global inspires gender-balanced leadership across political, economic and public life. Through the WILAN Leadership Institute, Abosede is building a pipeline of women leaders across Africa.
We shift the norms and build the systems that make women's leadership inevitable in Africa.
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