President of the United States Joe Biden has selected two Nigerian-Americans as advisers.
The appointees, Osagie Imasogie and Chiney Ogwumike, are part of the President’s Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement in the United States, which has 12 members.
Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Chairperson of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), congratulated the duo on their selection, saying their recognition and appointment to the 12-member advisory council is an inspiration to other Nigerians and Africans in general.
“The nomination of the two great Nigerians into the advisory council is a welcome development,” she said in a statement issued by the commission’s spokesman, Abdur-Rahman Balogun, on Wednesday.
Chinenye Ogwumike is a two-time WNBA All-Star for the Los Angeles Sparks as well as a full-time ESPN pundit and NBA analyst across many platforms.
She is one of just a few full-time professional athletes who simultaneously works as a full-time regular national sports media broadcaster.
Ogwumike was named WNBA Rookie of the Year in 2014 and is a two-time All-Star (2014, 2018). She is a proud Nigerian-American who graduated from Stanford University with a degree in International Relations under the tutelage of Dr. Condoleezza Rice.
She will become the first Black woman to broadcast a national daily sports-talk radio show in August 2020.
The 2021 Forbes 30 under 30 recipient is also an Executive Producer, working on an ESPN Films documentary “144” about the 2020 WNBA season.
Osagie Imasogie, on the other hand, is the Chairman of Quoin Capital and Quoin Advisors, an Investment Bank and SEC/FINRA licensed Broker-Dealer.
In addition, Imasogie is a co-founder of PIPV Capital, a bio sciences-focused private equity firm that has invested over $1 billion in the field.
Prior to co-founding PIPV Capital, he founded and served as Vice President of GlaxoSmithKline Ventures.
Imasogie has worked with pharmaceutical firms such as GSK, SmithKline Beecham, and DuPont Merck in key marketing and R&D positions. He has also worked as a Price Waterhouse Corporate Finance Partner and as an attorney with the prestigious U.S. law firm Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis.
Imasogie is a serial entrepreneur and investor who sits on the boards of several financial organizations, including FS-KKR Capital Corp and Haverford Trust, which manage over $28 billion in assets. He advises Brown Advisory, a group that oversees more than $140 billion.
Imasogie is Vice-Chair of the Executive Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as a member of the Executive Committee and Chair of the Nominating & Governance Committee of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Kimmel Center.
In addition, Imasogie is a University of Pennsylvania Trustee, a member of the University’s Executive Committee, and the Chairman of the Board of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where he is an Adjunct Professor of Intellectual Property.
Imasogie has LLMs from the London School of Economics and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, and she is a member of the New York State Bar as well as being admitted to practice in other jurisdictions.