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Brenda 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.

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Long 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.

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Young 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.

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Val 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.

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Hannatu Adegboyega trained as a lawyer, graduated from the Nigerian Law School, and never practised. Instead, she walked into a retail sales role at Etisalat, was promoted to team lead in three months and key account manager in twelve, and went on to close some of the largest deals of her career across telecoms, fintech infrastructure, and now AI-powered logistics.

In this conversation, Hannatu talks about what she was actually following when she chose sales over law. She speaks about a truth we often don’t say out loud, that many deals don't happen in meeting rooms but at 11pm, over suya, at someone's house, and what it takes for a woman to navigate that world on her own terms. She speaks plainly about being the only woman in the room, what that has required of her that it never required of the men beside her, and what she looks for in the people she builds and leads.

This is a conversation about what it actually takes to close the deal, and to keep choosing rooms that weren't built with you in mind.

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Long before LagosMums grew to serve a community of 1.5 million people, Yetty Williams launched it in 2014 out of her own personal experiences as a young mother. Her transition into this work followed a career in finance and business strategy, forcing her to let go of certain professional habits while relying heavily on others that remained essential.

After ten years of expanding LagosMums from real-life experience and addressing recurring questions from parents, Yetty chose to pursue formal studies in cyberpsychology. In this conversation, she discusses what drove her to seek that academic foundation and shares key insights into children's digital environments that often go unnoticed by parents. She outlines the practical steps required for intentional digital parenting and explores the impact of AI on home life.

For the woman trying to make sense of AI at work while wondering what it's doing to her kids at home, this is where to start.

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As a nurse, Cassandra Ukaobi (Cassy UK)) created Tolicious to address a critical flaw she observed within healthcare: traditional medicine often waits until a crisis occurs. Motivated to intervene earlier, she focuses on supporting individuals before they reach a point of collapse.

Throughout this discussion, Cass examines the physical impact of burnout, focusing particularly on diaspora and African women balancing careers, businesses, migration pressures, and family expectations. She explores the origins of the belief that self-care is a betrayal and explains why this mindset persists even when recognized as harmful.

Ultimately, this dialogue explores the true toll of continuous exhaustion and what is required to break the cycle.

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Chinonso Clark walked away from a promising legal career in Nigeria, with an LLM in International Commercial Law, to build the Well Woman Warrior movement (W3 Global Mission), which is inspired by the biblical story of the woman at the well. 

She discusses walking away from law, pursuing a divine mandate, and balancing her faith-driven calling at W3 with her development work at Lead for Good Africa. She also shares insights on AUDACITY, the programme she built to help women push past whatever stands between them and their own leadership, and about where she is still becoming the woman she asks other women to be.

This conversation is for any woman who knows she was made for more and is waiting for permission that may never officially come.

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Pamela Campagna spent a career teaching leadership at the highest levels, including a class at Hult International Business School called Authentic Leadership: the Moral Perspective. She closes that class by asking people to name their crucible moment, the experience that set the direction of their life. 

In this conversation, Pamela talks about her own crucible, the moment that put her in that classroom asking that question in the first place. She describes what it actually requires of her to hold a room after it has gone somewhere raw and emotional, why she enrolled in an Inner MBA programme decades into her career, and the honest moral reckonings her own leadership has demanded of her. She also speaks to what she is seeing as organisations rush into AI adoption without reckoning with what that rush signals to the people inside them.

This is a conversation about what actually moves people, and what it costs the person doing the moving.

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Kerry-Lyn Stanton-Downes is a psychotherapist, speaker, and author who fundamentally challenges the narrative that being a good partner means being endlessly patient, adaptable, and available. In this episode, she breaks down her foundational "Regulate. Relate. Reconnect." framework, redefining what it actually means to be present for others without sacrificing yourself.

Rounding out the episode, she tackles direct, practical questions submitted by our community, offering actionable strategies and new perspectives for navigating your most pressing relationship challenges.

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