Bolanle Williams-Olley came to the U.S. at age 17 from Nigeria, with the plan of getting her degree in computer science. Instead, trusting her gut and following her passion for math, she pivoted to eventually take on an accounting role in architecture. Now, she serves as the CFO of the prestigious New York firm, Mancini Duffy, which has been shaking up the architecture world with a patented VR design process.
Jack McCullough sits down with Williams-Olley to discuss her career journey and insights—from her upbringing in Lagos, to her framework for bold leadership, to how she gives back to her community. Listen by clicking below. The Q&A, lightly edited and trimmed for clarity, follows.
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Listen to the podcast here
I’m joined by my friend, Bolanle Williams-Olley. Welcome to the Secrets of Rockstar CFOs.
Thank you very much for having me, Jack.
It’s great to have you. I’ve been looking forward to having you as a guest since I launched the podcast. I want to give people a chance to understand your firm. What can you tell us about Mancini Duffy at a high level?
Mancini is an architecture and interior design firm based in New York City. We are more than 100 years old. I’m not 100 but we have been fortunate to have such an amazing and rich legacy given to us, myself and the partners who are currently the ones running the organization. We service all sorts of sectors, aviation, hospitality, corporate interiors, finance, self-storage, you name it, we’re doing it.
We completed an amazing project in Times Square, TSX Entertainment out there. If you are ever in New York City and you see that project, it’s my firm that did it. We take a tech-forward approach when it comes to how we win work, how we design and how we push our architects and projects forward. We have a patent-approved software. It’s something that we’ve developed called the Tool Belt. We’re proud of that. That’s part of our legacy.
What it essentially does is bring our clients into a 360 design process very early on in the project. We take the client to the location even before the project is done. They are in a VR environment, and they can see their projects. It helps key stakeholders make their decisions much faster. We like to say, the things that appear, with how we used to design, that would take three weeks. We can do it in three hours. We still need the full three weeks, but we’re using it more to fine-tune the decisions that the client has made and it allows us to start our projects amazingly. That’s long and short about Mancini.
I’d love to chat a little about your background because, among American CFOs, it’s relatively rare. You were raised in Nigeria by a single mom. I’d love to know how that experience has impacted you both personally and professionally.
My childhood up until age 17, I was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. My mom was a single mother. She did an amazing job, making sure that I had the best education and was raised with a lot of love. My mom was from what we will call a polygamist home. She has 44 brothers and sisters. I did not meet all of them, but that’s a pretty large family. Nobody was considered half. I was raised with lots of cousins. Even if I was an only child, I never felt alone because we were always at someone’s house or relative’s place. I grew up around a lot of people.
On that side, she did an amazing job with me then. What was very important to her was education. She comes from a long line of educated people. Her brother was called The Professor. We still call him Uncle Professor till today. We had an Uncle Lawyer, we had an Uncle Professor and we had an Auntie Miss who was a teacher. If you think about these titles, these people were the first lawyers and first professors in the family.
When she was thinking about my education, she knew that she wanted me to come to school in the States. She was fortunate to have studied in the States. She went to Rutgers and is very proud of her education there. She knew that she wanted to give that to me. She worked very hard. We came to New York and visited a couple of times. In the summer of 2000, we were in New York City and we identified the university I would attend, which was one of the city universities in New York called Hunter College.
I remember I applied through an internet cafe. People might remember that they have to pay a certain amount for 30 minutes to get internet. That’s how I used to check the status of my school application. I remember I got admitted and I was supposed to have started school in Spring of 2002. I missed the email, so I had to reapply, be able to go back in there, get the email, write Hunter College and say, “Please, can we defer my admission?” Long story short, my admission was deferred. My mom came and dropped me off in the Summer of 2002.
That began my now 24-year life journey in the United States. Going through college and then moving on. I’m sure we’ll get a little bit into that, but she has such a huge influence on how she interacted with people and how she valued education. Being international, I didn’t want to disappoint her. Being in school here many miles away from her, I wanted her to be proud of me even though I was not in her purview every single day.
That’s fantastic. I completely phased out when you said your mother had 44 brothers and sisters. I think you’re defining brother and sister a little differently than I am. Are they half brothers and sisters?
Yes. That’s why I prefaced it with her being raised in a polygamist environment. A polygamist environment meant her father had many wives, but they all grew up in a community. There was no half. Everyone considered themselves brothers and sisters. For me, I always grew up thinking that this is how life is. Not at all.
I knew these things were out there in the world. I have never met anybody who lived in that type of situation. That’s fascinating. We don’t want to make the whole episode about that.
You have to bring my mother on to tell you how she was raised in that environment.
You came here for college, and you mentioned how important that is to your family. You have a degree in mathematics, education and social policy. Not exactly the most common path to becoming a CFO at a prestigious New York architecture firm, I wouldn’t think.
Not at all. I’ll give you a little backstory. Even when you go back to the application I had filled out for Hunter College, math and anything education-related wasn’t even on it. I believe I came here wanting to study computer engineering. I took the first semester of physics and in my way, I failed woefully. I said, “This is not for me. I cannot do this. My entire four-year degree is going to be physics-related. No.” However, I always had a strong affinity for math. In high school, I enjoyed doing math. I credited that switch in the degree to a teacher in high school who had pointed it out in what we would call SS2, which is 11th grade, and had signed me up for a math competition.
I said that if that teacher thought I was pretty strong or one of the top students and I’m enjoying the math classes I’m taking at Hunter, maybe I should go visit the department and see if I could craft out a career path. They had an accelerated bachelor’s and master’s program where your bachelor’s would be in math. The accelerated path was either in pure math or applied math. Applied math meant you could apply to any industry and work wherever you wanted to. I did a minor in computer science.
I picked up the phone and called my mother who was paying my tuition and had this whole script of how I was going to chart this path. It’s difficult if you had sent a child here and there was a clear-cut degree that we could then say, “This is the role you will get afterward,” to now saying you’re going to study math. However, she was very supportive, which I still cherish today. I thank her because if she had given me any doubt, forget it, maybe I would have gone back to that physics teacher.
I was able to then complete my first and second degrees in five years. I did graduate without any internships. I used to interview poorly then. I was always afraid. I didn’t know how to represent myself. I see that there was a turning moment getting very close to graduation knowing that I needed to find a job. I found this entry-level position for a junior project accountant at an architecture firm. The reason why I applied for that role was because I had taken technical drawing for one term in high school.
I had no idea what the architectural world was about. I had no clue, but I knew that I needed a job. This was something that I could connect with, and so I applied. Fortunately, the interviewer also studied math. I went into that interview and I said, “You know what? I’m going to be myself. I’m going to talk about my degree and talk about this thesis I was working on and if they like me, cool. If not, I guess my time is up in America and I will be heading back to Nigeria.”
I guess I must have made a good impression. With entry-level jobs, you’re hiring more for character. You don’t know anything. Is the person trainable? At the end of the day, they will learn the skills. Do they have good character? I believe that that’s why I was hired. I was able to demonstrate that in the interview. That began my journey into the architecture world.
Fast forward 10 years later, how does this education and social policy degree come into play? I always had a passion for education. I always thought I was going to go back to school. I didn’t know what I was going to go back to school for. I was considering an MBA and anything else, but I didn’t want to take exams.
I was doing work with my nonprofits focused on education in Nigeria. I would call it a very early career crisis. I’ve spent so long in this industry, eight or 10 years. I wasn’t able to necessarily see what my path would be. I said, “Maybe this is a great time for me to get this education and social policy degree done and out of the way.” I didn’t want to wait until later. My baby was a year and I was pregnant.
I said, “This is the best time to get it done.” Crazy, right? I was six months pregnant when I started that second degree. It was fueled because of the passion that I had for the work that I was doing. Because I was doing one project at a time, I thought that it would be great if I had book knowledge on how to solve some of these issues on a larger scale where I could have an impact maybe through consulting or whatever the case may be.
I knew that I needed to have a degree behind me. That’s what happened. I went and got it done and I was on this very interesting path. I’m almost done with the degree, I’m at my role, I have two kids and I get a phone call asking if I would be interested in running a finance group at an architecture firm. Let me take a step back. I was a senior project accountant.
I’m not in your industry but that’s a big leap.
It was a double promotion. I was like, “Are you talking to me?” I took the call and the person on the other line is Christian Giordano. He’s president and one of my partners now at Mancini. He and I worked at my first job, HLW together. We barely crossed paths, but he always says that he remembers coming to the accounting department and I was the only one who spoke to him when he came to drop off his expense reports.
He was a director of architecture. I was this junior project accountant in that position. That thing about character and how you interact with people and how you treat people made my name come up in conversation 10 years later. We went to lunch. I think at that point in time he was two or three years into running Mancini and redefining how the firm is positioned, and who is coming along this journey with him.
I said, “Are you crazy? I am a senior project accountant. What you’re asking me to do now is to look at finances on a firm-wide level.” The firm I worked at was very prestigious, and I had international exposure, but everything was all project-level. I wasn’t exposed to a lot of things on the firm side. However, he had such full support for me, believed in me and believed that I could step up to the role.
He also gave me a resource. He hired a financial consultant who worked with me for the first year. That, for me, was a game changer. I knew I would be able to step up by having someone in the form of a consultant, who is now my mentor. Having that was very key to my success. I always tell him still that after year one, I outgrew needing him as much as I did, but having him there for year one to go over concepts and go over history—he was very familiar with the company—it helped guide and navigate without judgment and any errors about him.
[Having] a sounding board as I was working and learning about the organization was essential to my success. It’s a very long way to tie in my two degrees, but if you go back to math, what does a math degree give me? The ability to think about problem-solving very differently. It’s not just one way of approaching it. At the end of the day, accounting is just algebra.
Accounting is rules-based and mathematics is the opposite of that. You’re solving a problem without any financial rules.
All of these experiences that I’ve had, coupled with how I functioned as an accountant, I see myself as a key member of the project team, going beyond issuing invoices at the end of the month and wanting to learn about the project. What stage are you in? How do I help the project succeed from an accounting perspective? How do I become the nth sense of design, where from the numbers, I can ask questions that help the project team think about challenges they’re working through differently or raise flags early enough?
I think having that experience set me aside differently for this controller position I took in 2017. What ended up happening is a year later—I’ve always worked for the next role without even sometimes knowing it—I was a true strategic partner to them. I was invested in the company, wanting to see us define our financial vision and all of that stuff. My partner said, “Enough of the controller title. We need to right-stand your title and give you the CFO promotion.” That’s my interesting path to CFO. I’m very grateful for the door and way being open for me.
That’s fantastic. I do have to object to one thing you said, though. You gave up because you were getting Cs. I was killing myself to get Cs. I’m from a school where if you get a C or if you have a 2.0 GPA, you get the same degree as everybody else. Why put any extra effort into it?
Can you imagine me coming from Nigeria to get a C? Not to say that it wasn’t my last C. I was young. I was 17 and it was my first time fully away from home. I would say maybe some of that pressure, wanting to make sure that I’m doing a good job and living up to expectations, whether they were put on me or not. I also was not enjoying the course.
The whole thing about grades puts so much pressure on a 17, 18 or 19-year-old. I know MIT, a few years ago, stopped giving grades for freshman year. They wanted the students to come in and learn the materials to the best of their ability at their own pace without having to worry about getting a grade.
You can get stressed out. I’m joking about being a C student myself, but you can think that the grade and how you do on a standardized test at that age is the biggest thing in the world. It’s not, but if you grow up your whole life being led to think that, you’ll believe it.
There’s also some stuff culturally from Nigeria and the importance of having excellent grades that played into how I performed in school. I did all right.
I’m sure you did better than all right. At Mancini, how big is the finance and accounting team?
We are a lean team. Including myself, there are six of us.
With that size report, you probably have a good personal connection to the entire team. I’m curious a little bit about what is your philosophy on building and growing teams. I know that you’re a practitioner of servant leadership.
First of all, the way I think of the team is almost a well-oiled machine or a tree. Everyone has their strengths and we all have to come together and work together to be able to do our roles excellently, as well as serve the firm, or the way my project accountants are serving their project managers. For myself, how I am serving the partners and employees at all levels. It’s very important for me to understand each person on my team, how they work best and how we can make sure that they are communicating well with the folks that they have to work with or changing their mindset.
I’ll take a step back. When I first joined, two ladies working at the organization had been there for 25 years. The way they thought the accounting group should perform and the way I thought it should perform were completely different. They were used to being told what to do, not given autonomy to make decisions or being asked, “What do you think about this? You know this firm through and through, you’ve seen the project and you’ve seen the people, what do you think we should do differently to help improve our group and our work performance?’
That was part of the first thing that I did. I spend time getting to know the people on my team. As the team grew over the years, it’s the same way. I spend a lot of time with them when they first start and make sure that the tools, skills and resources that I’m giving them enable them to run off well. I’m in the middle of doing training now. I hired a controller. I’m happy.
I’ve known you for a couple of years and you haven’t had one the entire time.
I haven’t had one, but at the rate at which our organization is growing, there was the need to have a strong second. The way I think about it is, how am I setting them up for success to be able to do their role well and to be able to think without having to check in with me at every point in time. To be able to make decisions and be confident in the decisions they’re making. Also, to be able to catch themselves when they make a mistake and not feel that they cannot speak up. How are you building this team of trust?
By spending this time and crafting it out—as painful as it is in my field because you want to focus on all your work—if you don’t spend that time initially and along the way consistently, it causes more issues for your team. You’re spending constantly having to fix as you go. That’s essentially my philosophy when it comes to building and developing the team.
One of the things that I’ve done much better along the way [of] being a leader is that radical candor part of it. If there are issues or we make a mistake on the team, how am I making sure that my team is owning up to it? You have to be able to give good feedback. Not in a mean way, but in a way that is going to help them not be afraid to speak up if an issue comes up, but be able to react and be proactive about coming up with solutions. That’s something that I’ve worked on myself in the last year or two as a leader to be able to speak up and communicate better with my team rather than either helping them work through it or not addressing it head-on. It has made us better.
That’s a fantastic philosophy. When we’ve spoken in the past, you had a quote that stuck with me and the quote was, “Once you know, you share.” Can you describe what that means to you and how you use that in a pragmatic way?
I think about that holistically in all areas of my life. As we’re journeying in life and learning, how are you pouring out that information? If it can help someone, how are you even mentoring or giving back to make other people’s pathways easier? It’s throughout my career, at different points, whether it’s an initiative that I’ve set up. When I became a leader, I needed to set up an organization or a community where other women making their paths within the architecture, engineering and interior design industry can come together regardless of department.
That was critical for me because I felt a lot of the professional services organizations catered toward the primary folks, the architects and designers. What about the accountant, the HR person or the lawyer who has now found themselves within this industry? How are they finding support as they’re navigating their career paths here? Regardless of the role within the industry, how do we come together and support ourselves in our careers?
I started an initiative called SheBuildsWaves. That was when I became a leader. I started that when I became CFO. During COVID, I started thinking about a lot of our smaller architecture firms navigating this global crisis and thinking about what I could put out there from a resource perspective that can help them navigate their finances, and help them feel they were on top and in charge of managing and understanding how to run successful firms.
I started SheBuildsMoney. The idea behind the whole SheBuilds initiative is the ethos of that quote. SheBuildsMoney put out one, two or three resources for smaller architecture firms. We shared a lot of content on social media and helped them with weekly financial check-ins [they] should be doing in [their] business. What should you do monthly? What is cash flow? Thinking about breaking down financial concepts in what I call KISS or Keep It So Simple ways helps the business owner or the person running the firm feel like they understand what they are doing.
It’s the same thing with my nonprofit SheBuildsLives. I was afforded this great education. How could I give back to Nigeria where I’m from? We’re about to be 11 years old. We’ve been supporting various schools in Nigeria. We have a flagship project called Project Tutored, which we run in low-income communities, giving them skills acquisition that can help the children of that community earn a living, as well as academic intervention.
My whole life is this way. I do the same thing with my friends. Regardless of our industries, how do we support each other as we are navigating? I’m always happy to share. I also feel like if you don’t pour out to others, then you’re going to get full. How do I make space for me to learn more without pouring to other people? If your cup is too full and you don’t pour it out, you’re not getting anything new. That’s how I tend to live my life.
On the subject of sharing knowledge, you and I met a couple of years ago because you authored a book. The book is Build Boldly. What motivated you to write the book, and what are some of the core lessons that you hope your readers will have found?
The time has gone by. This is 2024. I wrote Build Boldly in 2021. I always love to share this. I started 2021 with no idea that there was going to be a book birth. I never even wanted to write a book. I was like, I will figure out my career and keep going and keep sharing through these different initiatives that I had set up.
However, very early on in 2021, I was having a conversation with someone older. A lot of the things I had glossed over when I was talking about my career path and career journey was I thought that other people do this. This is not a big deal. People go to their CFO in the middle of a financial crisis and ask to do more rather than keeping their heads down, just to give you an example of something that I glossed over.
She encouraged me. She’d said, “I don’t mean to put any pressure on you, but you have this awesome and incredible journey moving here at 17 from Nigeria, and now you’re CFO of a very prestigious architecture firm in New York City. I think you should write a book about this path and what you did differently. Do some reflection and think about things that you can share with people that you think are not a big deal, but could be beneficial to your reader and see if you are open to writing this book.”
Long story short, I felt a lot of fear at that moment. That was my trigger to let me know that I needed to write the book. For me, this is the uncharted path. I’ve never experienced this. That means there’s something for me to learn in this journey to writing the book. Build Boldly was birthed. What I did in the book is reflect on my journey. I thought about the key things. If I could go to inflection moments where I felt like my career took off or I had major growth, be it small or big, what essentially happened then? What were the steps that I took to get there?
I realized that [there] were a lot of bold moves. There were a lot of bold decisions I made, whether I made them consciously or unconsciously. At 21 years old, not much that you know in life, but as I’m moving along, there are a lot more intentional bold steps I’m making. Because I love a good acronym, I came up with the BOLD framework.
“B” stands for Be yourself. When the doors opened for me, when the opportunity came my way, it truly was because I was myself. What does that mean? It’s not I feel good, but I lead with integrity. I led with my strengths. I spoke about my weaknesses, but they didn’t deter whoever was receiving them from giving me the opportunity. If I had been someone else when the doors opened for me and I walked in, there would have been issues. It’s wanting others to think about what it means to be yourself and begin to live that life out.
“O” stands for Open your mind to new definitions and opportunities. If I stayed stuck in wanting to study math and not exploring anything else, I don’t know if this opportunity within the architectural world would have opened up for me. Or let’s fast forward even to becoming a controller. If I weren’t open to taking that phone call, I wouldn’t be on this show at this moment. Being open to opportunities created and made a way for me.
“L” is Lifting others. We spent some time talking about that. As I’m moving along, how am I lifting other people along the way? Be it in a small way, even if it’s one person. If it’s many people, how am I lifting them as I’m moving along in life?
“D” is Don’t wait, do it now. I think a lot of us are on our way to achieving our goals and dreams. We need to step out of the way. We need to quiet all the what-ifs and press forth.
In the book, I talk about things from being courageous to pushing into your potential, and how we are leading at Mancini because I want other firm leaders to think about how [they] are leading boldly and authentically. Are you leading in a cookie-cutter way that you think a leader should show up or are you leading as yourself?
You build stronger teams, and you build a stronger organization. When you are bold, it allows you to take bold moves and bold risks. Of course, very calculated risks, but you need boldness to be able to move your firm and company forward in times like this. Let me give one example of how my firm has done things boldly. One is through technology. Two, Mancini used to be known as a corporate interior firm that only served financial clients in the early days.
My partners and I have diversified all the sectors that we serve. That’s part of making bold moves, bold choices and bold decisions because we could have been stuck. That’s part of what has helped us even over the last four years to weather the storm and everything that happened in 2020. It was because we had clientele from all different levels. That was a bold move and decision that we made, and it paid off for us in the long run.
Somebody once told me that cautious people seldom change the world. People who have a bold vision and take risks are the ones who make a long-term impact. I’d like to go back a little about that because you mentioned Mancini and technology. From our prior conversations, you’re using it both within the finance and accounting team, but you also think that it’s giving your firm a strategic advantage in the way you serve clients. Can we talk a little about the digital investment that the firm is making in its future?
When I started seven years ago, that was when the conversations started to pick up. Architecture has been done the same way for many hundreds of years. You design all of these beautiful projects. The 3D model that you print is a little miniature model of your project, but you can’t use it for anything. It’s nice to have in your office space, but then what else? What’s next? When you design these projects in the applications that they use, at the end of the day, they still have to print them on paper to give to the construction company.
Things have been done the same way for a long time. My partner Christian, alongside some of the employees, gave a space for an open forum and open discussion to start thinking about what can we do differently. What can we create? We first started with 3D printing, and it was about how we could print items and things that we could incorporate into our projects that are actual usable pieces that could be added to the project.
I always go back to the summer of 2017 when we bought our first 3D printer, and they printed a bridge that looked like eyeglasses. It was cured. When I say cured, the mold was hardened outside in the sun for a week or three weeks. It took forever but that one print that we did was the gateway to us now having four or five fleets of 3D printers. We were able to do a feature wall for one of our clients when you walk into the reception where they mixed in with proper brick and 3D printed bricks. It had this beautiful feature wall that was incorporated into the project. We did another donor wall for one of our education-related clients.
Exploring that was exciting for us. Because we started exploring that, it led to what we call our 360 design process. We now started thinking “How can we innovate? How can we do things differently in the way that we’re delivering projects to our clients?” It birthed the 360 Design Process where we bring in our clients from the very beginning.
It sounds like this is cutting-edge stuff within your industry.
Yes, it is.
Sorry for the interruption, but it’s fascinating to me. I don’t know if that’s because I don’t know what I’m talking about.
At least at the time when we started, no one else was doing this, or maybe larger firms were in some form of fashion, but what makes our way different and why we have our patents approved now is that we developed a program that connects a VR engine. We put the clients into this space even before they have the location. You might be thinking of considering different spaces and locations. We’re able to put you in a white box and build the environment, but that is linked to the architect’s model. Nothing is recreated.
Once the key stakeholders have gone or the clients have said, “I would like to see this table here. I want to see wood instead of metal.” All of these things, we can make the changes in real time and it’s changing in the architect’s model. When they step out, the architect does not have to recreate anything. What this way and process do is it helps the clients visualize and see things much earlier. They’re able to make decisions faster from a cost perspective. A lot of things that you will not pick up until you’re constructing, we’re able to then pick up and see in the space much earlier on in programming and schematic design.
These are all architecture firms, but let’s say early, early design before the design is fully developed. You’re able to pick a lot of these things, and it saves time. It allows us to deliver close to what the client wants rather than spending time showing them three different test fits, and they’ll say, “All of this is crap. We don’t like this. Go back to the drawing board.”
Think about all that back and forth. It is reduced by the process that we’ve developed. We have something called a Tool Belt and it looks like a tool belt on a construction person’s waist. There are different tools and different spaces where one could be a measurement tool, one could be a tool where the client can leave notes and one could be a materials tool. All of these help with the decisions that have to be made concerning the projects.
It’s our unique selling point when we’re trying to win work. We’re able to carry our clients on this journey. We’re able to show them proof of concept with many projects that we’ve now done. I will always say the first client that took a chance on us with this was a restaurant client. He brought his chef into our office. He and his chef sat in the restaurant at the bar, all in VR. They could see that the TV screens were a tad bit too high or they could see that the door to the kitchen was too close in view to guests who would either be sitting at the bar or some parts of the restaurant. On paper in the model, you would never see it.
The chef knew that he didn’t have enough space to turn around and that he could potentially bump into his sous chef. All of these different things let us know that we were onto something. This January, we received a nice document from the patent company saying that our seven years of hard work is now finally being approved.
For me, it’s very exciting. That’s part of why I was brought into the company because I’m part of something larger. You’re not just coming in and going out, but we can make an impact, not just for our employees but in the industry. Challenging our peers to think about things differently, and what could this potentially open up. Clients always give us different ideas, “Have you guys thought about using this software this way?” We’re like, “No, we haven’t.” It’s been an exciting journey.
I think in any business, sometimes your best ideas come from your clients or your customers. That’s fantastic. Since I’ve known you, you’ve always had such pride in working for Mancini Duffy. It’s amazing to hear the technology story. I want to switch gears a little bit about a topic that I know is important to you, philanthropy. When we’ve spoken in the past, I’ve begun to develop an inferiority complex that I’m not doing enough. You do a lot of philanthropic things. What are some of the things that you take the most pride in your life? How do you find time to do all of these?
I’ll share one. I touched on it a little briefly early on. It’s my nonprofit SheBuildsLives. The work that we do through SheBuildsLives focuses on improving the quality of education for children living in low-income communities in Nigeria. For me, any project that we’re able to do that can make a difference in their lives, and make these children and their families feel like there’s someone who cares. Not just me, but also the people who donate to the organization.
They feel like there’s someone who cares about the future of their kids. It’s something special that I don’t take for granted. I will always find time to do it. We’ve been fortunate to be able to support a school in a floating community called Makoko over the last couple of years. We ere able to rebuild their school space. Imagine an entire community all on water. This school is built on water. It educates for free 200 children every school year.
Are you the founder of this charity?
No. A kind man called Noah is the school’s principal and I got connected to him many years ago. My nonprofit has supported the school with the school rebuild, with radios and food during COVID because that was the only way we could get an education to the kids. Think about kids in those communities who can’t go home and log into Wi-Fi. 1) You don’t have constant electricity. 2) There’s no Wi-Fi.
We had to think about what way can we provide education to them while they couldn’t get to school. The state was broadcasting math and English lessons over the radio. We said, “We’re going to buy radios so that they can listen at home.” Think about the ripple effects also. Their parents at times are not educated, but now everyone in the house is tuned into this radio, listening to lessons. There were ripple effects beyond the children. It went to parents who might want to listen or not.
That’s one project that we do. The other one that we do that we’re now expanding is a flagship project called Project Tutored. That is twofold, skills acquisition and academic intervention. We started in an internally displaced people’s camp. Those are the people who have been displaced from their homes and had to move to other parts of the country due to religious challenges that existed in their states. We’ve supported that program there.
Last year, we were able to move into two states and this year, we’re hoping to be able to move into five. The idea is to have the Project Tutored all across the different communities where the skills are tailored to the community because what might work in one doesn’t necessarily work in the other. We come up with two to three skills that we teach them throughout the summer. We teach them for about four to five weeks. Where do I find the time?
Because you have two relatively young kids.
I have two children. Project Tutored is done in the summer. We have most of the year to figure out the logistical part of it, and then we’re plugged in the summer. With the other school, you have trusted people who are back home that are running it so that if I’m not as plugged in on the day-to-day, there’s someone there who can update me on school needs and on things for the children that we might need to get. Maybe I need to quickly do a fundraiser to make sure that we can cover whatever might be coming up, and that has helped along the way. It’s forming these long-term relationships with people back home.
I have a question. In fact, I may have a bit of a problem for you. I keep hearing about these lavish parties that you have and I haven’t been invited to one yet. Are you angry at me?
Of course not. Anytime.
You take a lot of pride in the parties that you host. Is that fair to say?
Yes, for my 9 to 5-ish kids. I feel like it’s an outlet because with work you’re constantly thinking about it. I feel like it’s an amazing outlet for me where I get to connect with my kids. We think about themes for their birthdays now that they’re older. It’s something that I look forward to. My daughter turned 10 and so we had a 10X party. Everything was larger than life. It was a lot of fun. The kids enjoyed it. When she turned seven, we had a 007 escape room-themed party. That was fun. It was also her golden birthday. It was the girl with the golden birthday.
In my next life, I want to be one of your kids.
That’s what everyone says. Everyone says, “Adopt me.” I always bring the same energy even if it’s a couple of kids in the house or it’s a larger party. My goal always is for the kids to have a good time and to go home with great gifts that the parents wouldn’t be upset with. I don’t send home with a lot of candies. It’s an outlet for me and I enjoy it. It brings some likeness to the seriousness of my job.
Yes, you need to have all of that balance. Bola, this has been great. I’d love to conclude. If you can share some advice or some of the wisdom you’ve accumulated to the next generation of CFOs.
Think about your life in seasons. There’s a time for learning, and you might currently be in a learning season, so don’t try to run too fast. If you’re in a learning season, who are you learning from? How are you connected? How are you helping yourself improve? You’re always constantly learning, but truly in your career, there’s a time when you don’t know what you don’t know.
Make sure that you’re open and staying curious to learn at all different phases. The second thing I would say is don’t be afraid of the opportunity in front of you. It could be an opportunity to step up, to add more to your role, to step into a new role and position, or to do more in your firm, in your CFO role if you’re starting. Don’t be afraid. Trust yourself. Trust your inner gut on decisions that you have to make. It would all work out in some way, shape or form. It will work out for you.
That’s wise advice and for those who are tuning in, I want to remind you that Bola did write a wonderful book. It’s called Build Boldly, Chart Your Unique Career Path, and Lead With Courage. It’s available for sure at Amazon because that’s where I got my copy, but probably pretty much everywhere.
This has been a fun conversation, very insightful stuff that you shared, and great to learn a little bit more about your background. Thank you very much for being here. I’d love to give you the final word.
Thank you very much, Jack. I enjoyed our conversation.
