Where Tomiwa from

Lagos, Nigeria

 

Interview

What was your dream when you were a kid? What was the reason?

I wanted to be a doctor because I wanted to help people feel better

What was your dream when you were 18 years old? What was the reason?

Nothing, I wasn’t sure what I wanted at 18

What made you start thinking about social entrepreneurship/social enterprises? When was that?

When I was in final year in university in 2014, I wanted to start an NGO but then I thought it would be best to find a way to help people and make money, like organizational psychology, I didn’t know about Social entrepreneurship at the time. During my search for a course on this, I found the Hult MSE program

How much do you think social entrepreneurs play an important role in the world?

I believe social entrepreneurship is one of the keys to making the world genuinely better because it requires the ability to look outside yourself and at what is best for other people. I think we have the ability to influence people by helping them see the bigger picture and how they can fix the problems. I believe social entrepreneurs are leaders and should act as teachers of a new version of business

What would you say to future social entrepreneurs / those who are interested in social entrepreneurs?

I would say go into it with an open mind, don’t think you know better than anyone or vise versa because they have more or less experience, or because they’re from a certain background. The first step is learning to listen

What is your favorite quote? Who said that quote?

“it’s unbelievable how enough you are” (not sure where from)

“Do not gloat over me, my enemies for though I fall, I will rise again. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light.” Micah 7:8 (from the bible)

 

 

Who Tomiwa is

Tomiwa is like wind, suddenly showing up in front of you from out of nowhere and then disappearing  out of your view when you notice her. When a conversation that you have is heating up, she calms you down with sweet words. When you are in a hard situation, she makes you comfortable by being with you.

Even if Tomiwa is not a part of a team that you belong to, she listens to you and gives you a helpful piece of advice when she sits next to you or close to you. I cannot count how many times Tomiwa helped Musana Carts, a social venture that Manon, Taliey and I co-founded.

Tomiwa has the courage to speak up by providing her opinions during classes as well. She is basically very calm so can see things objectively, and her points totally make sense.

Tomiwa is a funny person, so we often tell jokes to each other. I think that she likes making people laugh. I actually like making her smile as well.

Awesome Episode

At the beginning of our program,  we covered basic learnings for future social entrepreneurs through a course  called Toolbox. ur professor required a presentation from each team. It was the first presentation day in front of all of us in the class.

Our professor randomly chose one person from each team, and Tomiwa was selected as one of the presenters from her team. She got nervous and sometimes had to stop her presentation to calm herself and to reorganize the content. I would have done terribly worse than she did. She was not given time even to prepare for the presentation. I would have been more nervous than she was, for sure. However, she did it so well in the end! She was brave and it was very impressive.

What touched me the most was that our classmates as the audience gave her a big applause, and cheered, “woohoo,” to Tomiwa after the presentation to celebrate her good job and her courage.  I still clearly remember that scene. I almost cried in that moment when I saw it happen. . It was the first time and the biggest moment that I strongly felt I had made the right decision to take the Master of Social Entrepreneurship course at Hult International Business School in San Francisco campus with the most awesome, beloved classmates who have big hearts from all over the world!

These are the MSEs that I am proud of as my forever life-long friends.

 

The Power of MSE

What Tomiwa is holding is a symbol called “go-en(ご縁)”, which means ‘fate’, ’destiny’ and ’special tie.’

I believe that it is meant to be that we met in San Francisco! I studied Social Entrepreneurship with Tomiwa for a year, saying “We will make the world a better place.” I would love to spend the rest of my life with MSEs (Master of Social Entrepreneurship; my classmates) until the very day I die. They have already completely changed my life.

At the same time, however, I also think that we should not be together all the time, because that is not the reason why we learned Social Entrepreneurship. That is not how we will deliver the impact we want to give to society and to the world.

I think MSEs are like dandelions. We were seeded at the first day at Hult and we bloomed on our graduation day. Our mission is that we spread all over the world like dandelions and seed the future, the next generation, from each place where each of us has landed.

本当にありがとう(Honto ni Arigato-); Thank you very very much for everything!! The world needs you! Let’s make the world a better place together!!