About Her:

Honey Ogundeyi is a well-known Management Consultant with a decade old experience in Internet, Telecoms, Brand Management and Business Consulting. She is also skilful in web commerce, online and mobile advertising.

Honey is the Founder and CEO of Fashpa; an exceptional online retail store that provides customers with trendy fashion and accessories in Nigeria and beyond. She hails from a family of entrepreneurs and graduated with a B.Sc. in Public Policy from the University of Birmingham in 2004.

Honey started Fashpa because of a number of reasons. She was unable to buy a pair of shoes because it was unnecessarily exorbitant. Therefore there is a need to ensure the accessibility and affordability of quality clothing to help Nigerians and other Africans stay in touch with their culture via fashion.

Before Fashpa, Honey Ogundeyi carved a niche for herself with the various places she worked and the career she built in all the different countries she's lived in!

Her Work:

• Between 2004 – 2006, she worked in Heirs Alliance; an associate of United Bank for Africa (UBA), Lagos State, Nigeria.
• From 2006 – 2009, she worked as Senior Analyst at McKinsey and Company, Brussels, Belgium. She was involved in handling complex and high profile projects and providing solutions to clients.
• From March 2009 –August 2010, she was a Senior Business Consultant at Ericsson, Lagos State.
• While at Ericsson, she worked as the Brand Capability Manger in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Still at Ericsson, between 2011 – 2012, she served as Head of Brand Management Region, Sub Saharan, Africa where she led a new brand strategy rollout plan for Ericsson in Sub Saharan Africa.
• From February 2012 – March 2012, she was the Industry Manager of Google, Lagos State. She worked with the Country Manager to develop Google’s marketplace and also proffered advertising solutions to clients from different business sectors.
•  Since November 2013, she's been at Fashpa.com.

Aside her many achievements, Honey Ogundeyi has been recognized and honoured by prominent international/national non-profit outfits for the excellent role she has been playing in using technological platforms to inspire today’s women in Africa.

Start-ups greats are still awed by her ability to fuse trendy fashion with technology in Nigeria. Fashpa, has also become a popular clothing line and fashion lifestyle brand that is sought by customers in Africa and beyond.

• In 2014, she became a Junior Achievement Ambassador (I am JAN); economic education non-profit that motivates aspiring business leaders.
• In June 2014, she was among the guest speakers at the Africa Rising Summit in London where she extensively spoke on the untapped opportunities that exist in Online Retailing in Africa. She was also named among the top ten emerging women entrepreneurs to watch in Africa by Forbes.
• In 2015, she was named in a list of 100 most inspiring Nigerian women by Ynaija.com.
• Honey Ogundeyi advices start-ups by writing inspiring articles in her blog that is essential for Nigerian women to thrive in business.

Why TechHer Loves Her:

Honey Ogundeyi is driven by the desire to make an impact. The lesson for women is that we can leverage on technology as an enabler both for starting and promoting great concepts. We will never know until we try!

Honey Ogundeyi belongs to the ‘Never Give Up’ school of thought, and has always written about women starting small. She believes that everything great starts small. She says Fashpa started in her bedroom before she got an office. This trendy fashion brand is a testament of her problem solving skills.

Honey Ogundeyi once said “...I think what is interesting about developing online platforms is that you can’t just apply what happens in Europe and America to this market. So you have to adapt it and make it relevant to our Nigerian and African customer.”

How are you adapting technology to suit your market/community/audience today?

Information gleaned from the Internet.

About Her

Funke Opeke is Nigerian by birth. She is the Founder and CEO of Main One Cable; an Internet solutions company in Nigeria that built a sub-marine cable system which provides advanced network, voice, data, and cloud services to locations across West Africa.

Funke was born into a lovely family and has six siblings; she grew up in Ibadan, Oyo State. Her father was the first indigenous Director of the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria and her mum once worked as Head Teacher of different Catholic private schools in Ibadan.

She attended Queen’s School, Ibadan for High School, and graduated with a B.Sc  in Electronics and Electrical Engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University in 1981. She also has a Master’s Degree in the same discipline from Columbia University, New York; she got that in 1984.

Her Work

She started her career as a Systems Engineer, then joined PA Consulting Group where she held several senior positions at Allied Signal and Telcordia Communications.

• Between 2001 and 2005, she was the Executive Director, Performance Assurance with the Wholesale Division of  Verizon Communications, New York, and was involved in designing and implementing business frameworks for Verizon.
• In 2005, Funke Opeke returned to Nigeria, after a successful career spanning over 2 decades in ICTs in the United States.
• In October of that year, she replaced Demola Eleso as the Chief Technical Officer at MTN Nigeria, and resigned her appointment after 5 months. Her  role at MTN Nigeria included planning and management for business operations.
• She also had a brief stint at NITEL (Nigerian Telecommunications) as the Interim Chief Operating Officer (COO) and was part of the team that advised Transcorp on the Privatization of NITEL.
• On July 22nd, 2010, Main One Cable started full operation. This feat became possible after 7,000km of fibre optic cable was laid under sea from Portugal down to Accra, Ghana  and Lagos, Nigeria. Capital for this project (touted as the biggest of its type in West Africa) was gotten by raising $240 million, and a contingency fund of $28 million.

Part of Main One Cable’s mission is to start a cyber revolution that would connect the whole of Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Funke Opeke has a keen interest in identifying and utilizing opportunities, and this shines through all the projects she gets involved in.

In 2012, Funke was recipient of the CNBC All Africa Businesswoman of the Year Award. She is  a member of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, USA and the Nigerian Society of Engineers.

On the 20th of January 2015, Funke Opeke was appointed as Independent Non-Executive Director to the Board of Atlas Mara, a top notch investor relations firm.

Why TechHer Loves Her

She’s a rare Amazon and epitome of hard work for women folk and a result-oriented Engineer. She’ s a woman with great foresight, and has excellent work ethic. She sees problems as surmountable challenges, which is perhaps one of the reasons she started Main One in the first place. Beyond being shocked at the abysmal level of internet connectivity, she did something.

Prior to Main One Cable, she advocated for the fair treatment of subordinates, especially junior employees in her work places.

Funke Opeke is known to have said  "While the developed world was fully connected, here in Nigeria the average young person didn't know what the internet was. We can’t leave an entire generation of young people without prosper access to the internet." We agree, and are inspired by her achievements.

Information gleaned from the Internet.