Lagos Business School is on the front burner yet again, as one of its distinguished alumni recently came tops in the coveted WIMBIZ Impact Investment Competition held at Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos recently.
Stephanie Obi, a graduate of Computer Science, was on the Master’s in Business Administration (MBA 9) programme at LBS before she went on to start her online business school which earned her the Women in Business, Management and Public Service (WIMBIZ) award.
The competition, open to women between the ages of 21-30, is aimed at equipping female-owned startups with the support to ensure success. It identifies three sustainable business plans with clear goals and objectives that positively impact society.
“While I was on the MBA at LBS, I ran an accessories business on the side. I later decided to start teaching other young ladies how to make these accessories. I held monthly training sessions at home, and marketed my training programmes online. In no time, people started calling me from all over the country. They were interested in my training programme but could not travel down to Lagos,” she explains.
According to Stephanie, it was this gap that inspired her to build an online school where people from outside Lagos could pay and take classes online.
“The LBS MBA programme was very instrumental to my success because it exposed and prepared me for the work I am doing now. I learnt how to work with people, make presentations, break down complex business problems, and got to understand what a business needs to run optimally,” she discloses.
The top three businesses will be awarded N1 million each; while the top 10 applicants will be granted scholarships to attend the Annual WIMBIZ Conference 2014.
Stephanie’s vision is to offer 1000 courses in 10 years’ time which will impact about 20 million people, directly or indirectly.
“We are building the online platform, creating in-house courses, partnering with reputable facilitators and training organisations to host more courses on the platform,” she adds. “We are open to any form of partnership.”
