Celebrating Ndi-Igbo

Chizoba is the founder and Executive Director of Unveiling Africa (UVA), an international non-profit that unites and connects Nigerian teenagers around the globe for positive social change. She holds a Masters in Educational Administration and International Development Education from the University of Toronto and is currently pursuing a PhD. Chizoba’s excellence and contributions in the community, professional life and academia has gained recognition. She is the recipient of the 2013 Heroes Award for Selfless Service to Africa, Global Citizenship Award from the University of Alberta International, Teamwork Award from Alberta Transportation and the BBPA Minerva Scholarship for academic excellence. Chizoba is a Junior Fellow at Massey College in University of Toronto.

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 ...

One to watch In 2001, Harrison C. Nwozo Jr, created Tribe X Entertainment LLC, a promotions and Nigerian brand marketing company in Maryland, USA. Tribe X Entertainment has promoted and sponsored many historical events in the Washington DC Metropolitan area. They include his first event in 2001, a Banky W concert in Washington DC, several Nollywood movie premieres, African International Beauty Pageants, fashion shows, Soccer tournaments, Fundraisers, African Festivals and numerous concerts featuring Nigeria’s top acts like Tuface, Dbanj, Flavour Nabania, Julius Agwu, and P Square to name a few. Harrison "Harry Baba" Nwozo Jr won the Award for Best US based Promoter in 2008 from the Nigerian entertainment Awards, New York. In 2011, Mr Nwozo assembled a group of talented young African artists in the Diaspora and he co-executively produced a song and video whose theme was African Unity: "Africans. In addition, Harrison created the ‘Ndi Igbo Jikotanu’ mixtapes to p...

Dehlia Umunna is a Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She has been a lecturer at HLS since 2007, and is Deputy Director and Clinical Instructor at HLS’s Criminal Justice Institute (CJI). Prior to joining CJI, Ms. Umunna spent seven years at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS) as a trial attorney. At PDS, she represented indigent clients in hundreds of cases that ranged in seriousness from misdemeanor charges of theft, assault, and drug possession, to felony charges of narcotics distribution, firearms possession, armed robbery, kidnapping, child sexual abuse, rape and homicide. Some of Ms. Umunna’s cases received nationwide media attention. From 2002 to 2007, Ms. Umunna was an adjunct professor of law at American University, Washington College of Law (WCL). In that capacity, she created and taught a seminar titled “The Lawyer’s Role in the Judicial Practice."  Ms. Umunna is a member of the Massachusetts, Maryland, District of Colu...

Dr. Amara Enyia, 32, earned a PhD in education policy studies and a law degree simultaneously from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has served as a public policy fellow under former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Currently, she works as a municipal development consultant and is the executive director of Austin Chamber of Commerce on Chicago’s West Side. Amara serves on the board of the Renaissance Reintegration Project. This social enterprise provides entrepreneurship training for ex-offenders often unable to successfully reintegrate to their communities because of the stigma of their records. A keen athlete, she has participated in two Ironman competitions. In 2014 Amara announced her candidacy for Mayor of Chicago, she was one of the first candidates to announce a bid to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel. She later withdrew.