Unoma Ndili Okorafor is a

Nigerian Nigerians or the Nigerian people are citizens of Nigeria or people with ancestry from Nigeria. The name Nigeria was taken from the Niger River running through the country. This name was allegedly coined in the late 19th century by British jour ...

computer scientist and entrepreneur. Okorafor founded Working to Advance African Women, a non-profit that supports the education of African women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in 2007. She is the chief executive officer at Herbal Goodness and Fairview Data Technologies. She is the fifth child of

Frank Nwachukwu Ndili Frank Nwachukwu Ndili (born 6 October 1934) was the 1st Nigerian Nuclear Physicist and the 7th Vice Chancellor (President) of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He served as Vice Chancellor (President) of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka from 1980 ...

, the first Nigerian nuclear

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

and the 7th Vice-Chancellor (President) of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Early life and education

Okorafor was born in Nigeria. She studied computer and electrical engineering at the University of Lagos, graduating in 2008. She moved to Texas for her graduate studies, earning a master's degree at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

in 2001 and a PhD from

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

in 2008. At

she was a

Sloan Foundation The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support or ...

Scholar. Okorafor married Ekpe Okorafor and has three children. Her PhD, ''Secure Integrated Routing and Localization in Wireless Optical Sensor Networks'', was supervised by Deepa Kundur. She then joined

Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business (also known as Stanford GSB) is the graduate business school of Stanford University, a private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective business schoo ...

, where she completed an Executive Program in Social Entrepreneurship. She also completed the Social Entrepreneurship program at INSEAD.

Career

Okorafor has worked at

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

and IBM. In 2007, whilst completing her PhD, Okorafor founded Working to Advance African Women (WAAW).WAAW
is a

501(c) A 501(c) organization is a nonprofit organization in the Law of the United States#Federal law, federal law of the United States according to Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. § 501(c)) and is one of over 29 types of nonprofit organizations exe ...

not-for-profit which promotes STEM education to African women. She launched the program with savings she made as a graduate student. WAAW runs 13 programs in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon, Malawi, Togo, Nigeria and South Africa. They have over one hundred volunteer university fellows and reach several thousand girls a year. Alongside educating young women, Okorafor works with communities and families to ensure that no one tries to stop girls choosing STEM subjects. Okorafor is a visiting professor at the

African University of Science and Technology The African University of Science and Technology (AUST) is an undergraduate and post-graduate university that is part of a university system concept developed by the Nelson Mandela Institution (NMI). The university caters to over 5,000 students ...

, where she teaches courses on computer science. She is the chief executive officer at Herbal Goodness, Fairview Data Technologies, and Radicube Technologies.

Awards and honors

*2018 - One of

OkayAfrica OkayAfrica (stylized as okayafrica) is a digital media platform dedicated to African culture, music and politics. Founded in 2011 by Vanessa Wruble and Ginny Suss as a sister site to The Roots frontman Questlove's Okayplayer, the site has become ...

's Top 100 Women in 2018 *2016 - ITU and

UN Women The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as UN Women, is a United Nations entity working for gender equality and the empowerment of women. UN Women advocates for the rights of women and girls, and focu ...

GEM Tech Award *2013 - Anita Borg Social Change Agent Award *2010 -

Crans Montana Crans-Montana is a municipality in the district of Sierre in the canton of Valais, Switzerland. On 1 January 2017 the former municipalities of Chermignon, Mollens, Montana and Randogne merged to form the new municipality of Crans-Montana. C ...

Leaders Forum "Future World leader"

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Okorafor, Unoma Ndili African computer businesspeople Nigerian chief executives Nigerian scientists Rice University alumni Texas A&M University alumni University of Lagos alumni African-American engineers 1974 births Living people 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American people