Celebrating Ndi-Igbo

Chigozie Obioma was born in Nigeria. He has lived in Cyprus, Turkey and now the United States where he is a professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. A recipient of Hopwood Awards in fiction and poetry, his fiction has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review and Transition. His novel, THE FISHERMEN, has been published originally in English by ONE/Pushkin Press (UK), Little, Brown (US/Canada), Scribe (Australia/NZ), and in 8 languages since Spring 2015. Chigozie Obioma was described by the NY Times as truly the heir to ­Chinua Achebe. Source: chigozieobioma.com, NY Times.

Ebele Okobi is facebook's head of public policy in Africa. Before joining Facebook Ebele was the Director of Yahoo!’s Business & Human Rights Program, leading Yahoo!’s efforts to promote privacy and free expression on the Internet. Before Yahoo!, Ebele worked as a corporate securities and mergers & acquisitions attorney at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York, Paris and London, an attorney fellow at Consumers Union (a consumer rights advocacy non-profit) in San Francisco, a director of Advisory Services at Catalyst (a non-profit with the mission of advancing women in business) in San Jose and Amsterdam and at Nike’s EMEA headquarters in Amsterdam, where she created marketing, corporate responsibility and business development strategy for Africa. In 2001, she took a year-long sabbatical in order to volunteer for human rights organizations in the US and Senegal. Ms. Okobi, who hails from Asaba, earned a BA in Psychology from the University of Southern California, a JD fro...

Jidenna Theodore Mobisson is a musical artist and performer. He was born in Wisconsin to an American mother, Tama Mobisson, an accountant, and a father of Igbo Nigerian heritage, Oliver Mobisson, a professor of computer science at Enugu State University until 1995, when the family moved from Nigeria to Massachusetts. Jidenna graduated from Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts in 2003. Jidenna attended Stanford University in California from 2003 to 2008. Jidenna is signed to Janelle Monáe's Wondaland Records label and distributed through Epic Records. He has collaborated with numerous artists, including Roman GianArthur, St. Beauty, Deep Cotton and Janelle Monáe herself, recording a five-song compilation EP titled The Eephus. In February 2015, he released his first single, "Classic Man", featuring Roman GianArthur, another artist signed to Wondaland Records. The song has been played in heavy rotation throughout the United States and debuted at number 49 on Billboard ...