Why we chose Misan as a Fellow

An economist by training, Misan has always had a passion for improving the lives of youth in her home country, Nigeria. She worked as a management consultant and in the nonprofit education world to gain the skills she needed to form her own organization. It was in business school where she developed a disruptive entrepreneurial lens to tackling youth unemployment back home in Nigeria, and founded WAVE.

In Nigeria, 50-80% of youth are unemployed. With opportunity in the burgeoning service sector, WAVE was established to train unemployed youth in relevant soft skills, like problem-solving and customer relations, and help place them in entry jobs in high-growth industries, like retail and hospitality. This kind of soft-skills training may be key to getting smart, unemployed youth into the jobs they deserve, and if it works in Nigeria, it could go big throughout Africa.