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HOW A NORTHEASTERN DEGREE IN BUSINESS EMPOWERED
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HOW A NORTHEASTERN DEGREE IN BUSINESS EMPOWERED
Temidola Ikomi, a 2017 graduate of the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, really missed the Northeastern community, so she joined Women Who Empower. To get more news about 国产三级在线, you can visit our official website.
Ikomi wanted to build new connections with like-minded women who wished to help each other grow and might have their own businesses, she says, because she is a co-founder of an African-inspired fashion brand in Nigeria, her home country.
This year Ikomi was honored with a 2022 Innovator Award, presented by the Women Who Empower, in the young alumnae undergraduate category along with a $22,000 cash prize. She entered the competition last year as well, but didn’t win.
“It shows that being an entrepreneur doesn’t mean that you are going to give up when you don’t get what you want. You just keep on pushing and pushing,” Ikomi says. Together with her mother and two sisters she owns a Nigerian fashion brand called Irawo Studio. Irawo means “stars” in Yoruba, one of the three main languages spoken in the country.They always knew they wanted to do something in the fashion world, Ikomi says.
“Fashion has been a great way for me to express how I feel, my identity without necessarily saying anything,” she says. “We all do love fashion. We all also want to embrace our Yoruba culture, [and] that’s something we’re able to do with a modern twist.”
Ikomi was born in Kano, in the northern part of Nigeria, and grew up between Lagos, Nairobi, Kenya, and South Africa because of her father’s travels in corporate banking. She attended a number of international schools and became familiar with meeting people from different cultures.
In 2012, she enrolled in a college in Virginia, but didn’t feel like it was diverse enough for her. She decided to transfer out and chose Northeastern for its diversity and the co-op program.
“I believe I grow the best through challenges at times, and I felt the co-op program would really allow me to see how it would be to be a full-time employee before I graduate,” she says.
While at Northeastern she was an adviser and the president of Northeastern African Student Organization. She graduated from the D’Amore-McKim School of Business in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and business administration.
Her first job was in corporate communication. In 2018, Ikomi moved from Boston to Brooklyn, New York, where she currently resides.
When both Temidola Ikomi and her sister Ama Ikomi graduated from college in 2017, the women in her family decided that it was time to start a fashion business back in Nigeria.
Ama Ikomi went to New York University Stern School of Business and took on the accounting and finance of their new company. Temidola Ikomi focused on marketing and advertising. Their younger sister Anire Ikomi, a graduate of Parsons School of Design, helps with the brand’s public image.
The day-to-day operation of the business is overseen by their mother, Abby Ikomi, who is the creative director of Irawo and lives in Lagos full-time.
This post was edited by freeamfva jack at October 5, 2022 3:45 AM EDT