Building a Global Community of Women in Technology.
Four years as the man behind the scenes
July 31, 2024, was my last day at Wentors, a global community of women in technology across 5 continents of the world — Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America. The community had grown from a team of 3 women into a community of over 5000 women in technology, of which I was directly involved in the overall growth of the community to 3500+ community members across 5 continents.
As wholesome as this story is, I can only capture a fraction of it in my write-up. Even as I transition out of Wentors, I am immensely proud of what the organization represents, and the work I did there in helping bridge the gap between men and women in the tech industry.
As with all stories, there’s a starting, and mine starts on Sunday, July 19, 2020.
In the previous weeks, I had been recommended by Mr Abraham Akpan, the then Executive director for Akure Tech Hub and Emerging Communities Africa, and also my boss for a role at Wentors. From the story I heard, EduAbasi [whom I will refer to as Edu moving forward] had reached out to Mr Abraham looking for someone who can handle content and comms for an initiative she was birthing, and someone the conversation ended in the mention of my name. Eventually, I got in on the conversation, I forwarded my makeshift resume to Mr Abraham who stood as a bridge between myself and Edu until I was interviewed.
Mr Abraham was on my interview call, and when asked if he had any reservations about me from how I answered and spoke in the interview, he said I remembered, “Edu, I have already said all I want to say about Tolu to you. You’ve heard him, I think he’s the best person to work with you. If anything, I know he is good at what he does and he is ready to learn what he doesn’t know”. And that was how I was hired.
I was an undergraduate at the Federal University of Technology, Akure in my 400 level. Earlier in the year, Mr Abraham had also helped me secure an internship placement [it was a job disguised as an internship placement] with ICE Commercial Power, a solar tech company based in Lagos after they visited Akure for an activation campaign. I had shown interest in interning at ICE for my SIWES program while being employed at Akure Tech Hub [I will call this “the hub” in further references] and shared this interest with Mr Abraham who was very supportive of my decision.
I started at ICE Commercial Power on Thursday, August 1, 2019, and resumed physically at the Lagos office on Monday, August 12, 2019, where I spent the next 6 months developing my hatred for the city of Lagos. My time at ICE was beautiful because I got to travel to different parts of Nigeria as we activated new markets within the country. I picked up photography and graphic design skills at ICE because my JD was a social media manager. I had only been 2 months learning Canva, and leveraging Canva templates, I was able to create designs that scaled the initial test for an entry-level role at ICE.
On December 23, 2020, I got laid off from ICE.
As said earlier, my journey with Wentors started in earnest in July 2019 after I received my offer letter on a Sunday evening. I remember being very elated at the idea of working with Edu. She had been the one I spoke with, and the way she communicated the vision of what she had in mind to build, the passion that flowed from her voice over the phone into my ears was palpable. If there was anything else, it would be the opportunity to learn from her, which as of 2019, all I was in the market for was an opportunity to learn whether or not I got paid for it.
My first colleagues were Esther, who was the programs coordinator, and days later, Edu introduced me to Unoma Adeyemi [would be referenced as Oma] her friend and former colleague at Microsoft who was going to be coming as the co-founder. Oma would be in charge of operations and finances, while Edu would manage the executive operations of the company. And so we began with a goal to impact women in technology across Africa, and by extension the world.
Not long after I joined, Esther resigned, and Dorathy Simeon [previously Dorathy Ifon] joined the team as the program’s coordinator and together we rolled out the first mentorship cohort for women in technology. The target of the cohort was to mentor 1000 women in technology across Africa, however, at the end of the cohort, we graduated 120+ women in tech across Africa — Nigeria and Kenya being the most represented.
My work at Wentors was mostly behind the scenes because we didn’t know how the fact that a man managed the comms of an organization positioning to be focused on women would affect the appeal to our audience. So, I took the reins of comms from behind the scenes. When we sourced mentors for our program, I profiled the potential mentors and distributed them to other members of the team who reached out and converted the mentors. For the few I profiled and converted myself, I did so under an alias.
To effectively manage comms for Wentors, I needed to be actively involved in communication with members of our community and to do this, I developed a persona which eventually became the go-to person for the organization. The persona eventually became an established brand associated with Wentors that even at a physical event hosted in 2022, the biggest ask were members of our community looking out for her.
However, the journey to the growth of the community was my primary concern, as I was responsible for the retention of the members we already had, and the acquisition of newer members. I opted to leverage a strength — writing — and sharing stories that resonated with women in the community.
I started out by sending emails to everyone on our email list, [over 500 people then], but eventually, I learned that a better way to do this was to use an email service provider. As much as I was good at writing and content creation, I had never managed a community of people before, however, I was now faced with a community of diverse women from different niches in technology. There needed to be a way to reconcile their different pain points and craft letters that would make it seem as though each of them were seen. That was a daunting task.
The instinctive response to a challenge like this is to take to the internet and start scrolling through the pages of Google, however, I opted for a more natural approach. I reached out to members of the community and started talking with them. I exchanged personal emails with over 500 women in technology discussing and finding out what exactly the issue they had was. I learned a lot in this period, and I saw the world from the eyes of many women who had to navigate the stereotype that was predominant in the industry. Using this information, I was able to curate letters that resonated with the women in the community and through 2021, I received responses to every letter that was sent out. Email engagement was up to 30.1% with an average open rate of 29.5%. I felt I had hacked email marketing, and to be fair, I had.
The next major milestone would be towards the next mentorship cohort set for March 8, 2021. Our target was 1000 women in technology across Africa. In this cohort, I was responsible for partnerships that would end in getting participants for our mentorship cohorts.
During that time I established partnerships with international organizations like Akirachix, AnitaB.org, SheHacks Kenya, Developer Student Club, Jomo Kenyatta University, Mount Kenya University, CTN Tech Ghana, Tech Nova, Ghana, etc. I established relationships across Kenya, and Ghana, within 2021, and by 2022, I had developed relationships with people in Ogilvy South Africa, CNBC, Sonya Barlow of BBC, and James McCann of ClearStory International to mention a few.
Another honourable mention is Charlene Hunter, founder, of Coding Black Females who had facilitated my membership into a black founders community for black founders in the diaspora. At the time, we needed to penetrate the UK market, so, I cold-emailed and DMed several people who fit the profile of who we were looking for. The connections and relationships built along the line of my work with Wentors is something invaluable, and I am grateful for the opportunity to take a front row in such a crucial task of levelling the playing field for women in technology.
There was a confidence boost whenever I reached out to women in top positions in various organizations across the world and shared the vision of Wentors. The first shock was that most of them were shocked that the conversation was with a male because my alias didn’t give off the fact that I was male. I usually end up telling a long story as to why the alias had to be created. One of the most exciting calls I had when sourcing for mentors was with a top executive at WhatsApp. She shared her experience rising in her career and the stereotypes she had to live with.
For one, I found effective the power of networking, and relentlessly chasing after the goals you’ve set for yourself. Today, I believe there’s nothing and no one out of reach since I am clear on what I am in search of.
The community grew steadily by word of mouth, several media partnerships amplifying our comms across their regions, and definitely with the help of my colleagues who were as relentless as I was to ensure we hit our milestones.
There were many moments I thought I would cave in under the pressure, given the fact that I was still an undergraduate balancing schooling activities with my job at Wentors.
In 2022 I met Edu and Oma for the first time.
I had been put in charge of organizing our first-ever physical meetup in Nigeria. In the next year, we were meant to be in Kenya, so the plan covered a regional event in Nigeria and Kenya. I had planned for both, speaking with a contact person in Kenya who was to help with essential details when the time was right. However, only the meetup in Nigeria happened.
Earlier in the year, I had hosted the first edition of BCP, and several minor events in the previous years, so my experience with event management was vital in how I worked with the resources provided to make this happen.
Through my work, and the many hats I wore at Wentors, Edu and Oma have been very supportive providing resources and going beyond to ensure the things I need to get the job done are always provided. However, this is usually after much scrutiny to ensure my ideas are well thought out. I am grateful for the feedback sessions, and the many times I was called out to ensure I delivered excellently.
Wentors is a great environment to work in. It ensures that every resource needed for you to succeed is made available. For example, in 2020, there was a project we were to work on, and I didn’t have the field expertise to deliver on it. Edu facilitated a relationship with Mr Orimolade Oluwamuyemi [I just call him Mr Yemi]. The relationship blossomed into a valuable mentor-mentee relationship with Mr Yemi. Mr Yemi was always asking, “Tolu, so what’s up? Let me know where you need me to come in”. Severally when I visited Lagos, it was always a ritual to make a stop at his office at Microsoft, firstly to chat with him, and also to take in the possibility of my dream of one day working with Microsoft.
At Wentors I honed my Identity and Design skills, Brand Strategy and Communication skills, and recently, when put on a product development project, I began cultivating an acumen for marketing and sales.
If it’s such a great place, why are you leaving?
I informed Edu I was leaving in February 2023, and in December 2023, I turned in my resignation letter. My stay till July was because Edu and Oma wanted to give me a float to ensure I kept earning while I searched for a new job. That’s a very gracious gesture for which I am very grateful.
I felt at a ceiling in my growth. However, in retrospect, I was suffering from a severe burnout that I couldn’t identify at the time. But, as I explained to Oma and Edu on a call, I felt stunted and given my nature of learning being that I learn faster when thrown in the heat of situations, I felt, I had figured out the ropes of everything I was doing at Wentors.
I believed, and still do, that I needed a new environment to stimulate my mind to chase after growth just like before. I am a sucker for growth and big and daring things. When things become predictable, I tend to find the next challenging venture. I was too comfortable with the work I was doing and it didn’t present any new challenges.
The reason I chose to leave was to find an adventure that would tear my mind open. it’s to find a place where I learn under someone to gain mastery of my role. My inclination presently is towards marketing and sales, and I am still in search of opportunities to put all I have learned at Wentors to use somewhere else.
What next?
In four years, I have worked completely behind the scenes, only taking the front row a few times. I enjoy the nature of the work I did at Wentors. Wentors is not a community of 5000+ women across 5 continents of the world. Presently in the community, we have representation of women in Latin America and the Caribbean region made possible by a partnership with The Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD), Guatemala Chapter established sometime in 2022.
I am looking for opportunities in Brand comms, marketing and sales to further hone my skills. Wentors was a great opportunity to broaden the scale of how I see the world and to aggressively learn the rudiments of partnerships and negotiations. However, in direct marketing and sales, I have yet to find an opportunity to greatly explore the extent of what’s possible.
I look forward to being able to return to work with Wentors soon, however, my journey presently takes me in a different direction, and I feel the need to explore my curiosity to the fullest.
