Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ejiroghene Mary Ukiri. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Ejiroghene Mary, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career

For the sake of the mission of my foundation, I would like to answer this question through the context of Nigerian education. Our mission as a foundation is to inspire graduating Senior Secondary School students to embark on their journey towards acquiring a University/ College education in Nigeria. We intend to do this by aiding their dreams and aspirations financially so as to relieve a substantial part of the burden that the cost of further education might be. That being said, it is the change that is needed in the Nigerian education system that inspires a majority of everything we do as a foundation. There are millions of brilliant Nigerian students nationwide that lack the ability to pursue or complete their further education due to a lack of funding or financial aid by the government. As a result of this, unemployment and illiteracy rapidly increases amongst the Nigerian youths. This is not due to the fact that they are incapable or unwilling to chase after their goals and dreams. Rather, it is because they lack the proper financial support to do so and a limited by the ever-increasing cost of education in the country. The EMU Team wants people to fully comprehend that there is great need for what we do. By donating, spreading the word, attending events, or even reaching out to our team, a very big impact is being made on a life that one cannot physically see or meet. As a person that has come to truly value the substance of emotions, that feeling of creating that big of a change in someone’s life is quite irreplaceable. A single contribution might be all that determines whether or not an aspiring student gets the help they need to chase after their dreams and take control of their educational journey.

Ejiroghene Mary, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

To get the ball rolling, I will start by introducing myself. My name is Ejiroghene Mary Ukiri, and I am a first-generation Nigerian-American with an immense passion for helping others achieve their dreams and life goals. That being said, the question becomes, “How exactly are you doing that, Mary?”. I cannot fully answer that question without providing some basic information about who I am and where I am from because my passion directly stems from the very diverse experiences that I have been fortunate to acquire from my pre-teenage years until now. I was born in New York city and moved to Nigeria at the tender age of five. I lived in Abuja, Nigeria for a total of eight years before moving back to the United States at the age of twelve. As one might expect, over the course of those years, I was able to form a deep connection and understanding of where I am from and the true importance of having a grasp of the not only the excitement but also the tribulations that come with being Nigerian, and in a semi-larger sense, being African. After successfully transitioning into my new life as an American teenager, I soon started to understand what it meant to be an African American woman in America. This experience is something that I proceeded to learn and struggle with as I took on my teenage years and navigated my way through high school. In an effort to share my experiences and ideas with my peers and people that might share my struggles, I wrote and published my very first article in the Lake Highlands Advocate Magazine at the age of seventeen. The article was titled, “Words from an LHHS student: How are we feeling,” and was able to capture a great amount of attention from members of my school and society. It was at this point in my life that I came to terms with my talent in writing, and so I started to not only believe that I have a voice but also that my voice resonated with a lot of people far and near from me. As a result of this article, I was offered a blogger position by the owner of a website called “The College Pod.” After a while of working under the College Pod, I had strengthened my abilities in writing and had a lot more confidence in using my voice and words to help others. In the year 2021, I took a vacation to Nigeria in order to visit my parents and loved ones. During my stay, I witnessed not only the extreme excesses and shortcomings of the Nigerian government but also the massive negative effect it was having on the livelihood of Nigerians. This deeply inspired me to use my voice to speak on behalf of people that might not have the means to. As a result of this, I wrote my first article outside of the United States, titled “We Are Bound to Never Forget.” This article proved to be my best work as it got multi-published in the nation’s most popular platforms such as ‘The Premium Times,’ ‘Vanguard’ and ‘Head Topics.” In an expected attempt to follow the steps of leading platforms in the nation, smaller online platforms like ‘The Daily Asset,’ ‘Latest Nigerian News,’ ‘Newstral,” and many others, also published the article, thereby, making it available to a great amount of Nigerian readers around the nation. This outcome made me come to terms with the importance of what I need to do as a writer and a change-maker. After my return to the United States, I was certain that I wanted to do everything I possibly can to use my voice to help those that cannot do so for themselves. As a result, I founded a non-profit organization/ scholarship fund named the “Ejiro M Ukiri International Scholarship Fund.” The mission of the organization is to inspire graduating Senior Secondary School students (equivalent to high school students) to embark on their journey towards acquiring a University/ College education in Nigeria. We intend to do this by aiding their dreams and aspirations financially so as to relieve a substantial part of the burden that the cost of further education might be. Our purpose is to support the young and talented minds that inhabit the winners and applicants of our scholarship in order to provide them with a true and meaningful chance for success in the nearest future. My aim is to provide a third-party scholarship for financially challenged students in order to not only motivate them but to give them a fair chance at education and achieving their dreams. I am currently working on raising the funds to reach this goal by organizing fundraising events, meeting the leaderships of other African- oriented clubs and organizations to discuss, and publicly speaking at churches and social events in order to raise money and awareness for a cause that will go a long way and have an enormous impact in the life of many Nigerians.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I have learned so many remarkable lessons in the course of being the director of the Ejiro M Ukiri International Scholarship fund team. However, I am going to start by highlighting the fact that as a leader, it is extremely important to remember that friends are not always the best coworkers. It is natural and expected that at the start of any business or non-profit there will be people around you that want to show their support and love for your business. This can easily become a problem when the responsibilities and roles of the business are distributed on the basis of friendships rather than who can actually carry out the role/jobs the best. As a leader, it is very important to assign job positions and responsibilities to the person that is most suitable for the job and not the person that you may have known for the longest. This is because the success of the business relies heavily on work getting done and not only on support. Because of this, I have learned to provide alternate ways for friends and loved ones to support my business such as donating, social media posting, attending fundraising events, and so on. It is salient to remember that the business comes first and as a leader, you have to do what is best for the business in order to be successful. To manage a team, you have to ensure that everyone is playing a part that they truly want. Your team members have to feel and see that they matter to the team. Sometimes, saying something like “Hey Micheal! I saw your work on the fliers and you did an amazing job! Thank you for all your work!”, is really all it takes. In this example, Micheal will end up feeling like all his hard work on the flier was acknowledged and be motivated to do more for the team moving forward. When it comes to maintaining high morale in a team, there are so many ways to go about it. For my own team I adapted the use of partnerships. Let team members work and bond together. I also allow for ‘chill days and conversations’. This gives an outlet for us to enjoy what we do as a team. Team members start to look forward to meetings and actively contributing to projects which is something we value as a whole. I also make sure to remind the team why we put all our efforts into what we do especially when we embark on challenging projects. It is very important that everyone enjoys the part they play on the team because that in itself maintains high morale.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I can think of a lot of stories that have illustrated my resilience over the years but I would like to highlight the time it really came through for me in the course of starting my non-profit. At the establishment of my non -profit, I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do. The problem was building people’s confidence in what I wanted to achieve through the scholarships. Because I did not have proof of students that my non-profit has been able to help, I started to come off to some people as a fraud. They had no assurance that when they donated, the money would actually go towards the education of Nigerian students that I said it will go towards. Even though this proved to be a challenge for me, I decided not to focus on it and instead to focus on ways to foster the non-profit so that with time people will see that it is a legit cause with the most pure and honest intentions. I felt that the more effort and resilience I showed towards raising money and publicizing the need for more financial support in the lives of Nigerian students, the more people will naturally be inclined towards helping, believing, and spreading the word. This theory ended up being immensely correct because not long after the founding of my non-profit, we received a lot of support from people we did not even know. This made it possible for the money we needed to sponsor our first group of students to be raised in our first year of starting.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ejirointernationalscholarshipfund.com/
• Instagram: @ejiromukirifoundation
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ejiroghene-mary-ukiri-b747bb1a6
• Other: https://ejirointernationalscholarshipfund.com/donate/