Simi Nwogugu

Simi Nwogugu is CEO of Junior Achievement (JA) Africa, which equips young Africans with financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and employability skills. JA Africa is part of the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated JA Worldwide, one of the world’s largest youth-serving NGOs that prepares young people for the future of work. Prior to joining JA Africa, Simi served as the executive director of Junior Achievement (JA) Nigeria, which she brought to Nigeria in 1999, after she served as a volunteer in New York and realized that the entrepreneurial training programs were exactly what the large unemployed youth population in Nigeria needed.

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 helped major corporations retain and advance high-performing women. In 2016, she returned to the role of Executive Director at JA Nigeria, building digital and out-of-school youth programs that enabled the organization to reach underserved populations in the North even during the Boko Haram crisis and COVID-19 pandemic. Simi became CEO of JA Africa in 2020, and since then has expanded JA operations to 23 countries in Africa reaching over one million youth annually