The Tony Elumelu Foundation has spent the last decade or so devoted to its vision of transforming Africa through entrepreneurship. This year, the foundation announced the appointment of a new CEO, Somachi Chris-Asoluka.
Chris-Asoluka has had a meteoric rise, accomplishing in a decade what many others take two or more decades to achieve. She may be one of the youngest Chief Executives of a Foundation of such size and impact, and all indications indicate that, given her drive and capacity, she will achieve even more.
Education
Somachi Chris-Asoluka is a Summa Cum Laude graduate from Saint Mary’s College of California, and she has a BSc. in Economics with a minor in Mathematics. While in college, she tutored Economics, Math, Statistics, and Creative Writing, and also served as a regular contributor to the school paper, ‘The Collegian’. She was an active volunteer in the local Oakland community as a high school tutor, and in New Jersey as a middle school teacher.
Upon graduation, she received the “Adam Smith” award normally given to the highest-performing graduating student in Economics. She also bagged a Master’s Degree in International and Development Economics from Yale University in 2012. She would later point to ‘Development Economics’ as her favorite class, as it examined the subject of microfinance, an area she intends to further explore in West Africa.
Career
After completing her Master’s Degree, in 2013 Somachi served her National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) working as a research assistant at the Lagos Business School. In this role, she co-authored research articles chronicling the internationalization processes of top African institutions for case studies to train MBA students. She also coordinated and managed the Annual Lagos Business School Career Fair.
Somachi later interned as a columnist for the BusinessDay newspaper. Somachi worked with Phillips Consulting Limited’s Corporate Governance and Finance section from November 2013 to September 2014.
In 2014, Somachi joined the Tony Elumelu Foundation to serve as the Foundation’s Head of Research, Head of Policy and External Relations, and later as the Director of Partnerships and Communications.
At some point, Somachi Chris-Asoluka was in charge of policy and external relations, leading the Foundation’s advocacy programs, which include case studies, seminars, roundtables, and symposiums, as well as the data collection, analysis, and technique evaluation for all research publications of the Foundation. She also handled all ties and engagements for the foundation with the outside world.
On January 9, 2023, the Board of Trustees announced Somachi Chris-Asoluka as the new Chief Executive Officer of the Tony Elumelu Foundation. The appointment took effect on March 01, 2023, when the former CEO, Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu retired.
In her new role as CEO, Somachi will leverage her expertise, experience, and network to provide strategic leadership in consolidating and deepening the Foundation’s work of transforming Africa through entrepreneurship
Other recognitions
Somachi Chris-Asoluka is a fellow of the Moremi Initiative for Women’s Leadership in Africa, a program annually recognizing and engaging the top 25 most promising young women leaders on the continent. She is also a member of the Financial Women’s Association in San Francisco, the Omicron Delta Epsilon (National Economics Honor Society) in the United States, and the Financial Women’s Association in San Francisco. She is also a member of the Omicron Delta Epsilon (National Economics Honor Society, USA).
She holds the honor of the MILEAD fellowship. Somachi is also Deputy Champion of the World Economic Forum (WEF) EDISON Alliance.
