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Anie Akpe opens up on how she made it in America and how she is giving back to Africa in her own little way

Apart from her stealer career in banking, Anie is also the founder of IBOM LLC and Innov8tiv magazine publisher.

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She is smart, oozes grace, class and above all possesses an undying love for Africa.

Anie is a business professional and entrepreneur with more than 15 years’ experience in the banking industry, currently managing a more than $800 million portfolio.

She resides in New York City and holds a bachelors degree and MBA from Dowling College in Long Island, N.Y.

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She has been recognised countless times for her achievements and more recently she was named as one of Women of Influence, 2016 by HousingWire one of US leading news sites covering lending, servicing, investments and real estate.

As founder of IBOM LLC, Akpe aids small businesses around the world, particularly those owned by African entrepreneurs in the Diaspora, guiding business development and strategy and leading sound results in the completion of their business goals.

Her latest pet project is a subsidiary of IBOM LLC and seeks to empower African women in technology.

The Nigerian born is the founder of African women in Tech (AWIT) conference talks, an annual event organized to support women in tech by bringing them together under one roof to network, learn the tricks of the trade and empower each other.

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In her free time, she is an avid reader, traveler and bike rider with a passion for entrepreneurship.

During the just concluded 2nd AWITKenya, 2017 conference talks held in Nairobi at Michael Joseph center, Business Insider SSA had a chat with her about her career, how she started the whole thing to what keeps her motivated.

The first AWITKenya conference talk was held last year at Kenyatta University and was an epic success.

How did you end up here, you know organizing events and interacting with women in tech?

“For me, I have been doing events in New York City for the past 6 years and those events focused on technology and how to create efficiency. At my full-time job which is vice president of Mortgage Operations at Municipal Credit Union, I had to come up with a way to create efficiency, so I had to discover systems that would work in our offices without laying off people but increase sales in volume at the same time. So with that being said once, I did that and I took it from $100 million to $800 million where it is now.”

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“Now because I did all those processes and had to figure out systems and maintain systems, people started approaching me with questions about businesses and technology, I said to them the best thing to do is get educated on it and they didn’t know where to go so, therefore, I started creating seminars to allow people get educated on entrepreneurship as well as businesses in general.”

So how did you come up with African Women in Tech (AWIT), what inspired you?

“Now when it came to African Women in Technology, I started by doing one event in New York city and then finally I said okay I am from Nigeria, I need to give back to Africa, you know I am in corporate America I have a high position why don’t you do something to give back to you know people back home. So I came up with the concept for the conference and I had friends that lived here in Kenya who said, don’t go to Nigeria first, come to Kenya (laughs) Kenya is better any way they said, so I said alright fine so from there I talked with Sam who runs Techmoran and we partnered up and that is how we came up to organizing the three day conference”

Since last year when you held the first AWITKenya conference, what has been the reaction so far?

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“What we have noticed is the last time we were here, we had over 200 women who came to participate and the good thing is the women also gave us feedback, that thanks to the conference they were now well informed in how to progress in their careers and businesses from one level to another, which is priceless.

For this year and going forward, what we have decided to do is, since we have a lot of women with a lot of questions ranging from investment, technology and even career questions from college students, so we have decided to focus more on creating solutions for that.

This year we have also partnered with investors that are willing to look at our entrepreneurs and see if their businesses are viable products and if they are, they are willing to invest inwards of  $50,000  -  $250,000.”

What are some of the challenges you have faced since coming up with this concept?

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“I think that the challenge has  always been just making sure that you are talking with the people that actually want to hear what you are talking about at that moment, that you are not just reverberating information and then also making sure that you stay connected to the community because if you don’t stay connected you lose the masses and it is good that the way we are working is we call women directly from a community to talk and share their experience with other women and that has always been my goal.

It is great for us to have speakers that are well known but I want 90% of the speakers to be from community, say they work and live in Kenya for example because then they know about the challenges found here and they can come up with a local solution to address that problem, so we hope not to lose that focus and that has been the thing that we have  tried to emphasized over and over”

Any milestones achieved?

“It is great to have milestones, you know we are happy with what we have actually accomplished and look at our numbers and say wow we had a great turn out, we are trending number one on twitter you know that is great.

But what did you learn? What did you take away the conference, so the greatest take away for us is getting Hey! I learned how to do this or I learned this new thing that I didn’t know that is more accomplishments to us than any milestones that we have achieved”

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After creating a successful concept like this one, it is easier to say I have done my bit and somebody else can now take it up and move on to the next challenge, what motivates you to keep coming to Africa to meet women in tech?

“You know believe it or not, it is instant gratifications it usually works (laughs), this morning when I came in, one of the girls walked up to me and said oh my God thank you so much for doing this, you have no idea what this means to me, and to hear someone say that, that is my instant gratification since I know I am making some type of an impact even if is 20 girls out of 200, some one really wanted it and they have an opportunity to get it and to be able to give that, that is more gratifying, it gives me more motivation to say okay you know what I have to continue on because it is more passion driven, that is what keeps me going”

Where do you foresee AWIT say in the next 5 years?

“In the 5 years we hope to have our own incubation hub along with our pipeline of investments so that we can make our decisions, right now we are partnering with people and request them to take a look at our pitch texts from entrepreneurs. But in the future we would like to have our own pipeline fund directly from people that we need and be able to create solutions, be able to hold more seminars, many more than just once a year, say maybe every three months but also something more specifically to address the needs that have been raised, possibly help create jobs as well.

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We also want to expand AWIT talks to other African countries, we are planning to enter Mozambique and Morocco, and then after that go to South Africa and then Nigeria”

What advice do you have for girls, women and anybody out there as your parting shot?

“I always say make sure you stay learning because to me I don’t care what it is you are doing if you are not on top of whatever that it is you are doing, no matter what sector you are in you lose, plain and simple.

I am in banking sector for instance and  if I don’t stay on top of the latest technologies I am gonna lose customers, I am gonna lose sales and so on and so forth, so make sure you always stay on top by getting educated, if it free class attend it, you know what I mean if it is a paid class and that is your only option go for It, so stay on top by continuously learning and making sure you know the latest because if you do that it just makes you more valuable”

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