Sheila Ochugboju

Dr. Sheila Ochugboju is committed to developing impactful African science, technology and innovation projects. She is currently the Executive Director of Alliance for Science at Cornell University. Ochugboju was recently appointed as one of the Global Roving Ambassadors for the County Government of Kisumu, Kenya, holding the portfolio of Transformative Science & Urban Resilience. As Chief Communications Officer for the African Center for Economic Development, she led the Rockefeller Foundation’s Informal City Dialogues for Accra in 2013, building the capacity of slum dwellers associations, street hawkers and several citizen activist groups to work with the Mayor’s Office and win a $1 million grant as one of the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities. Ochugboju is a TED Fellow and co-curator of the flagship event TEDxNairobi. Ochugboju is a biochemist, and was awarded the Daphne Jackson Trust Post-Doctoral Fellowship based at St. Hilda’s College, University of Oxford, to work on molecular genetics, microbiology and virology.

Born: 1968

Hometown: A forest-dependent rural community in Northern Cross Rivers State, Nigeria

Education: Ph.D. in Plant Biochemistry, University of London; Post-Doctoral Fellowship, molecular genetics, St. Hilda’s College, University of Oxford

Occupation: Executive Director of Alliance for Science at Cornell University

Achievements: Founding member of the Network of African Women Environmentalists (NAWE), Inaugural TED Africa Fellow, Co-founder of Africa Knows, Global Roving Ambassador for Kisumu, Kenya

Website: https://allianceforscience.org/team/dr-sheila-ochugboju/

Advice: We have so much and yet so little, of everything.