Abosede George-Ogan, Founder, Women in Leadership Advancement Network (WILAN) is a tri-sector leader and development professional with 20 years’ experience. Abosede has worked across the non-profit, private, and public sectors in over 30 States in Nigeria and five cities across West Africa facilitating multi-sectoral partnerships in multiple focus areas of the Sustainable Development Goals and has contributed to improving the health, education, and economic outcomes of many communities with gender as a crosscutting theme.
Abosede began her career in development with ActionAid International Nigeria and coordinated Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability for Keystone Bank, FirstBank and Samsung Electronics West Africa, respectively. Abosede also served as the pioneer Director, Strategy, Funding and Stakeholder Management at the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) as part of a team creating jobs in Africa’s largest city by population. She Chaired the Gender sub-committee of the Crosscutting Technical Working Group of the Medium-Term National Development Plan Team (2021-2050) which detailed the roadmap for Nigeria’s development over the next three decades and is a Vital Voice VV Engage fellow.
In the last five years, Abosede has been working actively in the women’s inclusion space since starting an online community in 2017 known as Womeninpoliticsng to foster women’s participation in politics in Nigeria. This evolved to a registered non-profit known as Women in Leadership advancement Network (WILAN) in 2018 and birth ElectHER which she cofounded in 2019. During her time there, she worked with the team to make ElectHER the foremost platform supporting women to decide, run and win elections in Nigeria and pioneered several initiatives and programs designed to give women a voice and empower them with skills and capital needed to run for elective office. Abosede left ElectHER in 2021.
In her current role at WILAN, Abosede is leading a bold vision "to inspire a shift to gender-balanced leadership across all levels of political, economic, and public life" and a mission "to ease access to the community, knowledge, resources, opportunities, and support that women need on their journey to become effective and thriving leaders." One of the ways Abosede and her team are looking to achieve this is by building a pipeline of young women leaders who are confident and equipped to lead differently by training 10,000 girls under the age of 24 years old over the next decade.
Abosede has a degree in Political Science/Public Administration from Igbinedion University, an MSc in Communications for Innovation and Development from the University of Reading and a Master in Public Administration (MPA) from the Harvard Kennedy School where she was recognised with the Josephine Vernon award as the most outstanding Edward S. Mason Fellow and the Women and Public Policy Programme Barbara Jordan Award for Women’s Leadership. She was named Woman of the Year 2020 for her work in Women's Political Participation by herNetwork and one of Nigeria’s 100 Most Inspirational Women by Leading Ladies Africa in 2019. For the Women's Month in 2022, Governor Jide
Sanwolu of Lagos state also recognized Abosede as one of Eko100 Women for her contribution to women's advancement