We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Afam Onyema a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Afam, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

When my father attended a prestigious British boarding school in Nigeria back in the 1950s, he served as a student assistant to a British missionary doctor who was caring for his school and the surrounding community. She instilled in him a passion for medicine and a desire to care for his people through improving their healthcare. As a young man, he made a promise to that doctor that he would bring better healthcare to his homeland — that he would save lives there. He left for the United States with my mother with that promise still warm in this heart.

For decades, he dreamed of returning to Nigeria to help those who are still suffering terribly there. As my siblings and I grew up, he told us constantly about his dream and the promise he made to that missionary doctor.

I graduated cum laude from Harvard in 2001 and worked in Chicago for a top public relations firm. I then spent a year working in the marketing department of Mayer Brown LLP, a leading international law firm, after which I entered Stanford Law School.

Throughout this time, my father’s dream remained a spark within me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. While at Stanford, I was inspired to help my father formally created a nonprofit as a vehicle through which to see his dream made real. After graduating in 2007, I turned down multiple, incredibly lucrative corporate law firm offers in order to lead GEANCO full-time.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was born in Chicago in 1979 as the second of four children. My father, Godwin, is an Obstetrician/Gynecologist, and my mother, Josephine, is an Emergency Room nurse. They met in Nigeria and immigrated to the US in the mid-70s to provide a better life for the family they planned to start. We moved to the south suburbs of Chicago when I was very young, and that is where I grew up.

In Nigeria over six decades ago, a missionary doctor inspired my father to go into medicine and save lives. It is one of the great mysteries of life that the seeds of my own life’s calling were planted at that moment. Those seeds were alive but dormant throughout my childhood, as my father told me stories about his dream and the promise he made to that doctor. As a young adult, I first sought ways to balance that dream with various professional and educational pursuits unrelated to life-saving in Nigeria. I explored whether I could subordinate that “do-gooder” passion in favor of status, financial success, cultural relevance, and/or political power.

As I went through Stanford Law School, however, it became fiercely and wonderfully clear to me that those once-dormant seeds had finally germinated and bloomed in my head and in my heart. I had no taste for power or money or fame. In the end, my decision to turn down corporate law and build GEANCO from scratch was less a revelation than a quiet evolution. I just reached the point where I could not not do this work. It was — and remains — in perfect harmony with what brings me the greatest joy and hopefully injects a bit of hope and healing into this scarred and weary world.

The GEANCO Foundation saves and transforms lives in Africa. We focus specifically on advancing health and education in Nigeria. Since 2005, we have led multiple medical missions to replace damaged hips & knees and to perform minimally-invasive surgeries to fix hernias and remove gallbladders and appendixes. We are the only organization that regularly conducts these types of complex surgical missions to Africa’s most populous country.

We also run an innovative daily program to screen and treat poor women for anemia, and we help vulnerable pregnant women safely deliver healthy babies. We also built a network of solar-powered maternal and family clinics in poor rural areas in Nigeria where pregnant women safely deliver healthy babies, children are vaccinated, young nurses are trained, and much more.

Through our David Oyelowo Leadership Scholarship for Girls, we provide full tuition, medical care, and social & psychological support to young female victims of terrorism and gender inequality in Nigeria.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The most important step is to just dive in and begin. So many great ideas wither and die before growing into world-changing organizations because their originators are too paralyzed, too daunted, too overwhelmed to start. The idea is the easy part. What is most challenging is making those first concrete steps with the understanding that those steps are going to be brutally difficult and that success will not come overnight, or even after many, many nights.

There is a powerful piece of scripture that I hold close to my heart, and I encourage people of any faith or of no faith to consider its counsel: Do not despise small beginnings, for the Lord [or the World] rejoices to see the work begin.

It is okay to start small. It is okay if your idea to change the world begins with trying to change one village, one school, one family, even one person. It is not only okay, it is powerful, magically even; for in that small beginning lies all the propulsive power necessary for you to grow, to draw in more support, more funding, more partners, more energy. Snap the chains of inertia that cause so many transformative ideas to remain stillborn, and watch how your courage, tenacity and faithfulness are rewarded, if not right away, then in due time.

When I was deciding between working for a corporate law firm and running GEANCO full-time right after law school, so many people told me to work for the firm first. “Build up some capital and establish yourself first”, they said. “Then you can transition into that ‘save the world’ stuff.”

While this advice was sensible (and financially tempting), I knew I had to take the plunge and start running GEANCO right away, when if we didn’t have a bank account yet, let alone any money to put into it. I had to make my small beginning. I had to break my own chains of inertia. I had to endure the lean, quiet, desperate early years and keep fighting to build my community of support — my GEANCO Foundation Family. Looking back, I rejoice at that decision and what those initial struggles taught me about myself and my ability to endure and persevere.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

1. Be patient — In my first strategic plan for GEANCO, which was barely a page long, I had us raising $5 million in our first summer!? I quickly learned it would take slightly more time than that!

2. Be flexible — Realize that, while your mission should stay the same, your tactics for getting there can change, and often must change. Early in my leadership of GEANCO, we conflated our tactics with our overall goals, and that caused a measure of frustration when those tactics were not as success as we had hoped. We took too long to pivot to new tactics that were much successful

3. Don’t be too trusting — Early in GEANCO’s existence, I trusted a friend to take a leadership role in executing one of our biggest fundraising events to date. He quickly got in over his head and brought in a shady collaborator I did not know. The collaborator blatantly violated a signed contract, and we had to secure a pro bono law firm to recoup the funds he stole.

4. Bring people to your organization who are strong in areas where you are weak — At the outset, I wish I had brought in board members and volunteers who were strong in accounting, financial planning and budgeting. I took on too many of those obligations myself, and it was frustrating, as they are not my strengths. Better to lean on those with the necessary expertise and affinity, as they can execute necessary assignments and also provide informal tutoring.

5. Take a vacation — I absolutely love what I do, but I did not take a significant break from GEANCO for over 10 years, despite the well-documented benefits that come from doing so. Take time to recharge. Both you and your organization will benefit greatly.      

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.geanco.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geancofdn/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GEANCOFDN
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-geanco-foundation/mycompany/?viewAsMember=true
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GEANCOFDN
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GEANCOFDN

Image Credits
The GEANCO Foundation