Simi Nwogugu

Simi Nwogugu 

Simi Nwogugu is the executive director of Junior Achievement Nigeria (JAN), a member of Junior Achievement Worldwide. She was recently appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer of JA Africa, effective November 2020.

JAN is part of the world’s largest network of organizations dedicated to empowering students on financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurship through experiential, hands-on programs. JAN currently operates in 120 countries. 

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As a passionate entrepreneur, Simi Nwogugu brought Junior Achievement to Nigeria in 1999, after she served as a volunteer in New York and realized that the entrepreneurial training programs will be extremely beneficial for the growing youth population of Nigeria. 

Simi Nwogugu is an alumna of Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, where she earned degrees in English and Economics. She acquired her MBA from Harvard Business School. Simi started her career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs where she was first introduced to JA New York. After setting up and running JA Nigeria for three years, she left to pursue an MBA at Harvard Business School, after which she worked at MTV Networks in Business Development and Corporate Strategy for a few years before launching HOD Consulting, Inc., a New York-based leadership development firm that helps major corporations to retain and advance high-performing women, particularly women of color.

In recognition of her hard work and consistency, Simi Nwogugu and her contribution to work-life management in the United States, youth empowerment in Nigeria, and her own personal challenges to balance work, family, and social responsibility, are the subject of a Harvard Business School case study titled, “An Entrepreneur’s Journey: Simi Nwogugu.”

After a decade of entrepreneurship, Simi returned to her role as an executive director of JAN in 2016, to coordinate the expansion efforts of the organization in particular: the development of economic empowerment programs for young people in the North displaced by the Boko Haram crisis. Junior Achievement Nigeria has reached over 1,000,000 in- and out-of-school youth in all 36 States of Nigeria.  JAN alumni are successful business leaders and social entrepreneurs who volunteer their time and resources to ensure JAN’s sustainability.

Simi sits on the Advisory Council of the African Capital Alliance Foundation and is a member of the Global Advisory Committee for Teach For All.