'As far back as I can remember, I have always been a change agent, my career in the Fortune 500, as well as my work with start ups have progressed down that path. Every role, every project and every contract I have ever held has had a mandate for change. This led to executive oportunities abroad with start ups that had global reach, including Head of Country, and Regional Director positions on the African continent. In 2019 I started Abodunde Farms Limited. I had already been involved in agriculture in West Africa since 2012, with various small investments, and time spent in my paternal & maternal farming communities in Nigeria, doing research in between my executive career in the USA and abroad.' Femi Abodunde
Personal Statement
My reputation is that of an executive with a mantra that promotes information and communications technology as tools of economic empowerment. During my career I have also been recognized as a best in class leader by the Gallup Organization, & Marcus Buckingham, a New York Times best-selling author. I’ve spoken on how media and technology are reshaping youth, business and society at annual events such as NYU’s annual African Economic Forum and CUNY’s Annual Young African Leaders Symposium.
I’ve been involved with a number of expansion projects for startups and Fortune 500 companies in the USA and across the world (bricks/mortar, mobile and e-commerce), having developed road maps with a focus on local to global expansion activities while leading multi-site & cross functional leadership teams during high growth, transformation and ambiguous periods.
A few companies I have worked with as senior manager and/or executive:
Company Profile: Best Buy is one of the largest retail and ecommerce enterprises on the planet, it has been named a "Company of the Year" and ranked in the Top 10 of "America's Most Generous Corporations" by Forbes, and has made Fortune® magazine's List of 'America's Most Admired Companies' on numerous occasions.
I started my career in the Fortune 500, retail, eventually becoming directly responsible for one of the largest markets in the USA.
CarMax is the USA's largest retailer of used vehicles and revolutionized the automotive industry earning recognition as a Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® for 22 consecutive years.
Our team of executives ran the largest automotive service market in the USA, Los Angeles, and also the largest auto service center in America in Compton, California.
ALARA is a luxury lifestyle brand dedicated to contemporary art, and culture and is featured in the May 2014 edition of the Wall Street Journal (Online) and in Vogue Online's November, 2014.. The brand concept features a showcase store designed by celebrated architect David Adjaye, who was also lead designer for the Smithsonian Museum of African American History, located on the National Mall in Washington DC.
I worked closely with the global project manager on initial capitalization efforts and then executed on all aspects brand management including, planning, negotiating and maintaining all media vendor contracts. I hired the company's first management team, supervised construction of the showcase store, while establishing strong working relationships with shareholders, logistics providers and a range of new and established world class luxury brands including the likes of Valentino, Dries van Noten, Duro Olowu, Stella McCartney, and Moroso.
Alara’s founder subsequently went on to recognition on ‘The Business of Fashion 500.’
Company Profile: Mara Group is a Pan African company headquartered in the Middle East with vast experience operating in the financial services, manufacturing, real estate and technology sectors. It has many strategic advantages over local market competition and new entrants from outside the continent as a result of it's partnerships with foreign investors. A good illustration of this is Atlas Mara Co (ATMA:LN), co-founded with former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond.
I partnered directly with Christian Unger, one of Europe's top eCommerce advisors (currently at Partners Group AG, a leading private markets investment firm), to establish a strategic testing center for a technology and logistics related start up. I led onsite and remote individuals in Lagos, Dubai and Mumbai in forming a single team operating within an optimal cost model.
Company Profile: Iflix is a leading SVOD platform in emerging markets
I served in the role of Head of Nigeria, on an executive team compromised of executives across 5 continent's. My team developed the company's go-to-market strategy and beta launch plan for Africa and Nigeria, localized a multi-country streaming platform, and secured relevant local partnerships.
Jumia is the leading pan-African e-commerce platform, founded in 2012 in Lagos, Nigeria, with, as of 2026, a strong corporate presence, engineering, and investor relations team operating out of France. The company operates a comprehensive ecosystem comprising a marketplace, logistics network, and payment services (JumiaPay) across 8 key African markets.
In my role as a regional director in Nigeria, I fostered partnerships with local SMEs and utilizing a bespoke logistics network, to leverage a competitive advantage over other international entrants.
Career
Please walk us through how you got your start in retail, technology and ecommerce, and how this paved the way for your work with start-ups.
I started my professional career working for Best Buy when it was still a fairly small company with about 50 stores and only based in the midwest. Then mobile computing and the internet got really big, and that's what we were selling, computers, electronics, entertainment and connectivity. The company grew to about 1000 stores in the following 10 years and became a leader on the Fortune 500. So I guess I was in the right place at the right time, and doing the right. I started part-time on the sales floor in Ohio, and worked my way up into executive management as leader of one of the company's largest of geographic zones, headquartered in Philadelphia.
When you start at ground level the way I did, then work your way into executive leadership at one of the fastest growing companies in American history at the time, you become really good at launching, growing and transforming businesses, it becomes a part of your DNA.
History
You are a born American, grew up in Europe and have Africa roots. Explain.
I was born in upstate New York when my father attended college in the United States, following which we moved back to West Africa for a few years. When I was 5 we moved to Europe and lived there until I was 17, then I came back to the US on a permanent basis. Throughout those years in Europe (Northern Ireland, England and Austria), my parents made sure we traveled back to Africa and the United States, so I remained very connected to both my African heritage and my American birthplace. Since then I have worked and/or lived in the United States, Europe and Africa as an adult, so it's all full circle.
Mobility
You led teams on the west coast and the east coast, then your career took you abroad, please share a little about why you decided to take an international detour.
Mid-career in the Fortune 500 I realized that more and more businesses were starting to engage outside US borders, we were entering a new era in business, especially in technology related businesses. Many companies consider the ability to work across cultures a required skill set for all top executives. I have always taken the long view on my career/goals, and realized that I would need to gain international experience not only in terms of working on international projects, but also actually living abroad while I did this.
As an executive or consultant in today's world, it is important to be able to work across multiple cultures and demographics. Demonstrating multi-cultural and international experience helps you in building trust and confidence with the people you are working with.
I was raised in 5 different countries, so I have always been a global citizen, but there's a difference between being a global citizen and having actual international experience as an executive. As a contractor serving a global market it's not easy, you are constantly being tested in terms of your ability to work in different cultural environments. Ultimately, all these experiences help you grow as a leader and a human being.
Social Responsibility
What is your position on social responsibility and business?
I believe that positive social change is not necessarily a responsibility of businesses, rather it is a result of business. Let me explain. The attitude a business takes toward stakeholders is what really makes change in society. For example, if a business employs people and treats them fairly, in terms diversity and inclusion, wages, benefits , respect etc, those people in and of themselves are going to be a positive addition to any community because they’ll have a sense of dignity. Their sense of dignity has a bearing in the way that they will treat others and take care of their community. So in a sense all business leaders can have a tremendous impact on social change.
I have spoken on the subject of social change at places like NYU and CUNY, and also mentored a lot of young people about it through my relationship with Creative Visions Foundation. People often ask me why I never went for an Executive MBA, why I chose a social change program for my executive education, my answer is simple, I know how to run a business at senior executive level, I worked my way up from the ground up, there's not much an MBA will teach me, my interest is on making social impact as I do business, I wanted to be able to show the entrepreneurs and employees with whom I work how they can genuinely support social change through their own community of stakeholders.
Entrepreneurship
What are characteristics of successful
entreprenuers?
There are many different kinds of entrepreneurs, and you will also find different types of entrepreneurial people within any organization. Entrepreneurship is a mindset. What I mean by this is that there can be founders and organizational leaders who don't have an entrepreneurial mindset, and they will struggle as a result of this. In terms the profile of the average entrepreneur, there are many different and unique levels of openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, introversion, ambiversion, extraversion and neuroticism.
Entrepreneurship does not occur in a vacuum, and as such your personality, experiences in life, and the cultural environment in which you find yourself tend to shape what kind of entrepreneurial mindset you have. So it's not so much about your age as it is the experiences that have shaped your life. Interestingly enough, according to research by the Kauffman Foundation and others, the average age of 'successful' start-up founders is somewhere around 40, with high growth start-ups almost twice as likely to be launched by people over 55 as they are by folks 20-34.
Star Wars/Star Trek Philosophy
You are a big fan of 'Star Wars' and 'Star Trek', what are the lessons you take from both?
I love both the 'Star Wars' and the 'Star Trek' franchises because the parallels with business and society are incredible. They force leaders to ask questions of themselves, questions about their responsibility to humanity.
'Star Trek' points to a future in which human civilization is advanced enough to provide everyone with the basic necessities of life. It also shows us the ways in which we have already achieved great things in that society, yet some folks decide not to make some of those things accessible to all people. The importance of inclusion and diversity are my takeaways from Captain Kirk.
'Star Wars' teaches us that feats of human courage, rather than technological utopianism (the idea that technology in and of itself will guarantee a more free future) is the path to a better civilization. 'Star Wars' to me is all about the circle of life. Human potential is limitless. Nobody can put out our fire when we are in the right state of mind.
When God & Human Nature Change Course, Leaders Need To Change Course.
Strategy is Evolving.
Before the 1960’s the concept of “strategy” hardly existed in US or international economic culture. The most successful leaders up until that time succeeded on monopoly or lopsided conditions in the marketplace which favored them exclusively. They were not preoccupied the traditional cornerstones around which we build strategy: stakeholders, costs, and competition, because they didn’t have to be.
Beginning in the 1960's new technology and regulations brought new competition, and strategic thinking began to dominate our approach to economics. Now social media, the internet of things, high speed Internet and the advent of quantum computing will require that we re-invent strategy itself. Agile is now a matter of survival.
1960's - 2010's
2010's - Now
Transactional
Hierarchy Centric
Interactional
Community Centric
Marketshare
Physical Supply Chain
Push Based Stakeholders Experience
Network Effects
Digitally Enabled Ecosystems
Pull Based Stakeholder Experience
Disruption & Competition Are Everywhere.
In an increasingly competitive environment you are constantly required to rethink how you will create value today and in the future. In other words, you have to be in transformation mode 24/7. You are always in a process of metamorphosis - continuous improvement. Why? Because periodic improvements are not enough to win in today’s exponentially disrupted environment.
You need to be evolving, and that growth needs to be sustainable. This means that you must stay agile and that you are continuously reinventing yourself. Being the best is simply a measurement at point and time, you must continue to improve at a faster pace than the market is evolving. If you can't do this you will become irrelevant to all your stakeholders: irrelevance means that you are out of the stakeholders mind, and out of mind is eventually 'out of business.'
The Reality About Transformation
Transformations with simple, clear, unambiguous milestones are more likely to succeed.
One
Two
Most leaders today do not genuinely understand or have a well-established process for managing change.
Three
Most change management programs fail to meet their goals because of a lack of personal sacrifice and commitment from the leader.
Free Markets, Free Body & Free Mind.
Seeding and nurturing free market entrepreneurship has been the most effective way of creating value for humans in history. When there is virtue in the process, entrepreneurship is a path to independence from any type of physical or mental bondage. Where there is no virtue in the process and where entrepreneurship turns into monopoly, imperialism, socialism etc we are doomed. The world is rapidly decentralizing, any covert effort to re-introduce the archaic thought processes that prize centralization as an end goal are destined for failure over the long run. #Cooperation in a regime of contract replaces #exploitation that prevails in a regime of status. The fittest survive not by coercing or exploiting others, but by assisting them thru mutual exchanges that mark a #market #economy.
Humanity must compete in order to get better, when we do not compete nature will eliminate us, we are not the only miracle on the planet. So the name of the game then becomes about creating a healthy environment in which that competition can occur. This is where the law comes in. The law must evolve to ensure the playing field is as fair possible, or the competition can get very vicious indeed. Also, we cannot leave our most vulnerable behind. We must have social safety nets to protect the most vulnerable in this process of natural competition/evolution.
Humans have been able to achieve some incredible feats throughout history. However, where legal plunder has been allowed to go on unchecked, civilizations have collapsed time after time, indeed, we do not know of a single civilization that has not collapsed, we see the remnants of those ancient civilizations and corrupted thought processes all around us everyday. Everything must evolve.
"Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that #reality.” ― Socrates.