Woman Crush Wednesday: Chinyere Almona

Chinyere Almona is a renowned corporate governance and leadership development expert and an amazing business leader.  She is often referred to as the “Coaches’ Coach.” She was born on 14 August, 1969.

She became the Director General/ Chief Executive of Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Lagos Nigeria in Jul 2021. She is a certified leadership coach at Vantage Governance Services, Lagos, a position she occupied since Oct 2020 up till now. She is also an international public speaker.

She once led the implementation of a multi-million dollars corporate governance advisory portfolio to promote enviable practices and standards across Sub-Saharan Africa. She directed the effort to build capacity for over 360 SMEs on SME governance and Family Business Governance. Led the adaptation of IFC SME CG framework and training materials for Africa and conducted training for SME owners and business managers across Africa. She  also led a large, multicultural team, which developed academic CG curricula for 4 business schools and supported 6 regulators across Africa to promulgate 4 regulatory policies and building CG supervisory capacity.

Notably, she enabled clients to adopt acceptable CG practices, enabling access to finance of about US$42 million to allow private sector firms to grow and expand their operations. Built strategic relationships and engagement with stakeholders across 12 African countries, gaining support and buy-in for reforms.

In her leisure time, she enjoys engaging youth development initiatives and in the past 4years, she revealed that she has aided about 35 teenagers.

She is keen on empowering women. To that effect, she has an initiative tagged “Support-Our-Sisters”(SOS) initiative. The sole purpose of the initiative is to support women engaged in small scale businesses in Lagos.

Chinyere loves to tell stories and has ceased the opportunity to fan this habit to flame by writing 5 published books. She also co-founded the Authors Write-It-Now Academy, an avenue for aspiring authors to write and win.

She has equally worked in quite a number of reputable firms in different capacities such as:  SME development specialis as Founder/ Chief Executive Officer, Lagos (Oct 2020 – Jun 2021), Authors Win Academy, Regional Program Manager, Africa Corporate Governance Program, International Finance Corporation, IFC ( April 3012-Oct 2020), PricewaterhouseCoopers as Director/Business Leader: Governance, Risk and Compliance ( Jul 2011-Apr 2012), Principal Consultant-Governance, Risk and Compliance (Jan 2007-Jun 2011), Senior Consultant-Advisory: Performance Improvement Consulting ( Jan 2005-Dec 2006), Manager at Sustainable Business Solutions (June 201-Dec 2005) and Audit Assistance, Audit Manager, Assurance and Advisory Services (Sep1992-Jun 2001).