In this information age, you can’t be too knowledgeable —Remi Abere

Remi Abere, the Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs Lead, IBM, Central and West Africa, is a Strategy, Communication and Corporate expert. In this interview by TAYO GESINDE, she speaks on life as an entrepreneur and a professional.

Educational background

I have a B.SC in Accounting from University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ife, Osun State. I did a Masters degree in Communications and right now, I am doing Doctorate in Business Administration at the Warwick Business School. I have done series of professional exams in Accounting, Communications, executive coaching and so on. I have quite a number of certificates in different areas. I am a firm believer in continuous learning, you really have to keep those brain cells sharp and I totally believe till my rest day, I will be learning because in the information age we are today, you have to be continuously learning, there is nothing like being too knowledgeable.

Career path

My first core competence is being a Chartered Accountant but I can say that I have been in a lot of professions. I have been a project manager, a teacher, trainer, communication expert and now I am an information technologist. I have been an entrepreneur. I have done a whole lot of things. I am a firm believer, especially in the times we are living in today; that you never really have one profession.

Life as an entrepreneur

I started out as an entrepreneur because being a mother of five children, I needed the flexibility to be able to balance two roles: that of a housewife/mother and working woman. I had to have some kind of work that would enable me to balance my responsibility as a mother, wife and professional woman.  I started out at the bank which was not a great choice at all, a banking career although may be fulfilling is extremely intense and tasking. As a young mother, I was employed by a new generation bank in 1992 as an internal auditor and it was very busy and stressful. I remember back in the day I would get up at 6.00a.m and wouldn’t get back till 10, 11 or 12 midnight. Actually I recall a particular night I did not get home until the early hours of the following morning! My husband was livid and said, “Go and resign tomorrow!” I carried on for a while though I was not happy. In the morning before I left for work, my children will still be sleeping and when I got back at night, they would be fast asleep. It was definitely not the life for a working mother who wanted her children to grow up with good values. After a while, I realised I had to think out of the box  to find out what a married woman could do that will enable her take care  and spend quality time with her children and also fulfil her potential. When I was expecting my fourth child, I went to the US,  I was there for a short time and while I was there, I realised there was a market that I could fill as some of the more prominent African American women were yearning to identify with the African culture through fashion.  One of the ways in which they wanted to identify with us was with our couture. This gave birth to ‘Afrique Clothing When I got back, I created a very successful African fashion business with a tint of modern and western culture to it. I travelled a lot within the United States to sell Unique African outfits at African American shows. It was quite exciting I got to experience most states in America and their cultures. It was truly a fascinating experience and the bonus was that I was making money too! It truly opened my eyes to a lot of things. That was how I became an entrepreneur.

When I was in England, I had a conversation with my sister who just started a data capture business and was planning to outsource work to India. I convinced her to try Nigeria. After the pilot came back with an excellent rating she made the decision to go to Nigeria. We employed over 200 people to code data for companies in Europe. That was fantastic and it kept me busy for a long time. I was meeting talented young people and providing employment. That was my ideal job; I had time for my children and was still doing my fashion business. Innovation took over, things changed, coding of data became obsolete. Internet was a whole new ball game. Wi-Fi became the new kid on the block and all of a sudden, it was everywhere. Big lesson, you have to constantly innovate to stay in the game or you will most definitely be played out!

My next move was to train as an executive coach and also did a whole lot of IT and personal development courses. I did that for five years then a consultancy came calling. A chance meeting led me to my next career move-Financial inclusion. Since I had a background in finance, I decided to go with the flow of the universe.  I became the project director on a project we had with the Central  Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and World Bank on Microfinance Bank and how to improve financial inclusion in Nigeria. That was a very interesting job too and I did it for some years. After that, I was head hunted for IBM and that was how I ended there.

My job as corporate citizenship and corporate lead of IBM for West and Central Africa

As the Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs Lead for Central and West Africa, I have the responsibility of creating visibility for IBM in Africa through our various programmes. We have a whole lot of programmes to do with education, health, agriculture and economic development. Generally, we help solve societal issues using technology. We have range programmes in the educational space using software to make education easier, more efficient and effective.

At present, we are looking at how we can contribute to solving unemployment/underemployment  problem by helping to improve the skills of young graduates by  introducing free IT training in emerging technologies and introduce young Nigerians to how they can start looking for work on the internet from online outsourcing.

On the price I had to pay to get to the top of my career

It depends on what you define as the top of my career.  My goal for my working life has always been to enjoy what I do, to meet incredible people; have incredible experience while being thoroughly content  and make an impact on the society. I have collaborated and worked with the best of the best, as part of my job. I have met diverse people from different cultures and countries; have made a lot of friends and acquaintances, travelled widely and hopefully the best is yet to come. So, as regards a ‘Price’ It’s been a great journey so far and hopefully the rest of this wonderful journey will be incredible too!

I think I was able to balance family and career quite well because of the flexibility of work and living in today’s global world. I am truly grateful and happy for this as being a mother of five children, to raise five well rounded children and still be able to have a satisfying career is no walk in the park. I am immensely thankful my children are all well educated; my first four children have left home and are working while the last one is in boarding school about to sit for his GCSE’s. I think I balanced it as best as I could.

Role model

I have quite a few role models. My ultimate role model is Nelson Mandela because he encompases everything you need to be as a human being, spiritually, personally, ethically and morally. What a leader! He was selfless. It is a pity a lot of our leaders are not like him. Another person I admire immensely  is Michelle Obama, she made the world see black woman in a different light and she did it with dignity, poise and humility.  She has certainly raised the bar for women.

Lessons life has taught me

Humility, forgiveness, being able to make a contribution, being able to realise that you can never be in one place for a long time. No condition is permanent as they would say. If you are up today, don’t think it will always be like that. So, prepare yourself and never look down on people because you never know where you are going to find yourself tomorrow. And always help people along the way, especially the younger generation because roles will certainly be reversed and they will  ultimately grow up to be the people we admire and look up to. Also, if you put your mind on achieving something, you really need to  believe in yourself and with God’s blessing , you can achieve anything you want.

What people can do to survive recession

Be creative and innovative. There is work out there, especially in this age of the internet. The internet is one of the greatest inventions of our time. One has access to almost everyone in the world, all from a simple small machine. Isn’t that just the most incredible thing? There is so much to do on the internet.  Put on your thinking caps! Think outside the box! The world is your Oyster! Recession Ke!!! Go on the internet and do outsourcing. You have a skill, get a new skill, there are hundreds of free courses out there.. come on get busy!!  The only challenge we have today is that we want to be spoon fed. If you don’t have any skill, go and learn the simpliest of skills and that is how to type, to do data entry and you will get a job. I think this recession is a good thing because we are now beginning to look inward and we are looking at our skills. So discover yourself, develop your talent and be creative about how you can contribute to the society. Forget recession, it is a word, don’t believe in that word, believe in yourself and don’t wait for government because if you do, you will wait forever. Government can’t do it all.

Tips on how to have a successful career as a woman

One thing I have realised is that as women, we have many advantages which we probably don’t realise. One of these advantages is simply being a woman. Education is very important, be well educated and take good care of yourself. It doesn’t take a lot to look a million dollars these days and be in good shape. Make yourself attractive, give yourself the energy, work out. Do all you can to be your best self and stand out in a crowd. We can all do it as we all have something that is unique and special.  We are women! Embrace it, its truly a special gift! Be a nice, friendly & happy always!

Goals for 2017

To be a better person and to contribute in any way to the development of our talented Nigeria youth