Dear WIMBIZ Founders,
Twenty-five years ago, you saw something that needed to change. And instead of simply talking about it, you decided to build something.
That decision deserves to be celebrated.
As Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) marks its silver jubilee, I want to honour the vision, work and persistence that have sustained it for a quarter of a century. In a country where promising initiatives too often fade with their founders or their first funding cycle, endurance is itself an achievement.
But WIMBIZ has done more than endure. It has helped shape the architecture of women’s advancement in Nigeria.
And that matters.
It began with a question
The founding story has particular meaning for me.
In 2001, Chi-Chi Okonjo, my brother-in-law and the only man among the founding members, returned from a women’s leadership conference in South Africa with a question: Why couldn’t Nigeria have something similar?
He had seen the power of women connecting, exchanging ideas and building influence. Back home, he shared that possibility with women who understood both the opportunity and the work required to realise it. Among them were Omobola Johnson, Yewande Zaccheaus, Morin Desalu and Bola Adesola. A founding group gathered, brought their networks and experience to the table, and began building.
I remember attending that very first WIMBIZ conference in Abuja, where the late Pastor Bimbo Odukoya was among the speakers. Over the years, I have also spoken at WIMBIZ events and watched aspects of its evolution firsthand.
It is one thing to recognise a gap. Quite another to gather people, commit resources, establish structures and stay with the work long enough for it to make a difference.
That is how lasting change often begins. Not with certainty that everything will work, but with enough conviction to begin, and enough generosity to invite others to build alongside you.
The doors you helped open
Think about the professional landscape Nigerian women navigated in 2001. Women were qualifying, succeeding in demanding careers and building enterprises. Talent was never the issue. Access to influential networks, sponsorship, board opportunities, finance and structured support was far less assured.
WIMBIZ helped widen those pathways.
Its conferences and mentoring networks created opportunities to learn, connect and encounter visible examples of women leading. Its advocacy helped make women’s representation in leadership a sustained institutional conversation.
And its work has never been confined to corporate careers. The WIMBoard programme has developed and supported women pursuing board responsibilities. WIMBIZ Capital (WIMCAP) has helped women entrepreneurs strengthen their businesses and improve their readiness to access funding. Its entrepreneurship and impact investment initiatives have created further opportunities for women seeking to grow.
That breadth deserves recognition. We should never diminish the foundations simply because we now see a larger horizon.
There are measurable outcomes, certainly. But there are also the moments no impact report can fully capture: an introduction that changes a career, a mentor who encourages a woman to think bigger, an entrepreneur who learns to position her business for capital, a younger professional who enters a room and realises that the future she imagines is possible.
Multiply those moments across twenty-five years and you begin to understand the significance of what you built.
The courage to let an institution outgrow its founders
Another milestone deserves particular recognition.
In 2021, the founders initiated a governance transition, and in 2022, a new Board of Trustees took the reins.
That is no small thing.
Too many institutions remain so closely identified with their founders that succession becomes a crisis. Their vision, influence and personal authority become inseparable from the enterprise itself. Sometimes, the very qualities that make someone a successful founder become obstacles to building something that can survive without them.
Yet the ultimate ambition of institution-building cannot be to remain indispensable.
It must be to create something capable of growing beyond our personal leadership, something whose purpose and relevance are greater than any one individual.
That requires more than handing over titles. It requires building governance structures, developing future leaders and trusting others to interpret and extend the original vision.
In societies where founders are often expected to remain at the centre indefinitely, choosing succession is itself an act of leadership.
It takes vision to start. It takes stamina to sustain. And it takes maturity to hand over.
For founders across Africa, that is a lesson worth studying.
The true measure of what we build is not simply what we accomplish while we are present, but what becomes possible long after we have stepped away.
The next twenty-five years: Four questions about ownership
Anniversaries rightly invite gratitude. They should also invite ambition.
Last month, at the Executive Women’s Network’s tenth anniversary conference in Accra, I delivered my signature session on The Wealth Shift, challenging accomplished African women to look beyond leadership and representation towards meaningful economic ownership.
My central question was straightforward: How much of the economic value women help create do they actually own?
We have worked hard to open doors, break barriers and win seats at important tables. That work must continue.
But a seat is not the same as a stake.
In my recent Women. Wealth. Power. columns, I have been exploring four questions that I believe deserve a prominent place in the next chapter of African women’s advancement.
Where are the listed businesses owned by women? We have encouraged women to start businesses, and rightly so. But how do more of those enterprises scale into significant companies, attract institutional investment, build enduring governance structures and reach public markets? We need not only more women founders, but more women owning substantial enterprise value.
Where are the banks owned by women? Women have led financial institutions and managed enormous pools of capital. How do more become founders, investors and meaningful shareholders in the institutions that mobilise and allocate that capital? The question is not only who manages the money, but who owns the equity.
Where are the buildings owned by women? Beyond the family home or individual investment property, how do more women participate at scale in commercial real estate, hospitality, industrial assets and income-producing developments? How do we pool capital and expertise so that women own a greater share of the assets shaping African cities?
And where are the contracts? As women enter boardrooms and executive suites, how much of the procurement, infrastructure, development and supply-chain spending reaches capable women-owned businesses? Representation must connect more deliberately to the economic opportunities those institutions create.
These questions are not a rejection of what has already been achieved. They are possible precisely because of what has been achieved.
WIMBIZ and other institutions have helped develop leadership pipelines, entrepreneurial capacity, governance expertise and pathways to capital. The opportunity before us is to connect those achievements more deliberately to substantial ownership of businesses, financial institutions, productive assets and commercial opportunities.
From seats to stakes. From access to ownership. From individual achievement to collective economic power.
The power of women building across institutions
There is another part of this story I want to celebrate: the relationships that extend beyond organisational boundaries.
Bola Adesola, one of the WIMBIZ founders, has been a valued supporter of Inspired Women of Worth over the years, attending several of our summits and speaking at our Townhall events. More recently, she became a founding member and champion of Radiant Collective Capital.
I value what that represents. A woman’s commitment to advancing other women need not begin and end with the institution she helped create. Her experience, relationships and influence can become part of a much larger ecosystem of impact.
When we began building Inspired Women of Worth in 2010, we were responding to needs and possibilities we saw among women. That experience has reinforced my conviction that no single organisation, however successful, can address every dimension of women’s advancement.
Different institutions bring different strengths, histories and perspectives. Some focus on corporate leadership, others on entrepreneurship, governance, public service, personal development, investment or ownership.
These are not competing ambitions. They are different parts of a much larger transformation.
Imagine more intentional bridges between leadership networks and investment ecosystems. Between women who can open doors and women ready to build enterprises. Between access to boardrooms and access to contracts, capital and productive assets.
Not collaboration merely for the photograph or the shared event, but collaboration measured by what women are able to build, own and pass on.
Our collective impact should exceed the sum of our individual efforts.
A legacy worth building forward
Dear founders, I hope you recognise how much you have made possible. Not simply the conferences convened, programmes delivered or networks established, but the women emboldened, the doors opened and the possibilities expanded.
And I hope the generation now stewarding WIMBIZ will see its responsibility not simply as preserving your legacy, but enlarging it.
The anniversary theme, Rooted, Rising, Ready: Born in Africa, Built for the World, offers a fitting lens.
Rooted in the courage and vision of those who began. Rising beyond the barriers that remain. Ready to imagine and build a larger economic future.
A future with more women leading institutions, certainly. But also more women owning listed businesses, meaningful stakes in banks, income-producing buildings and the enterprises winning consequential contracts.
A future in which women do not merely contribute extraordinary value to the economy, but retain a meaningful share of the value they create.
To every founder who gave time, credibility, resources or conviction to this vision, and to everyone who has carried it forward, thank you.
You saw what was missing. You brought people together. You built something that has endured.
May the next twenty-five years take it further than any of us can currently see.
Bigger. Bolder. Brighter. A future in which we own what we build.
Happy 25th Anniversary, WIMBIZ.
Udo Maryanne Okonjo
Women. Wealth. Power.
Udo Maryanne Okonjo is a board director, wealth strategist, and investor. As Executive Chair of Fine &Country West Africa and Founder of Radiant Collective Capital, she champions women-led wealth, Impact and Legacy across Africa and Beyond.
