In the last few weeks, I have had the privilege of speaking with teenagers and young adults, from those in their final or penultimate year of university, contemplating graduation and life after graduation, through the faith-based platform for teenagers I volunteer with, to the young adults participating in our flagship InternAlt programme, and others life has brought my way recently.
Across these conversations, a few questions keep coming up:
How did you get here?
How did you know this was what you wanted to do?
How did you know you would not fail?
How did you figure it all out?
What if I make the wrong choice?
So many “how’s”, from young, ambitious and intelligent people who are already thinking deeply and intentionally about their futures.
And beneath the questions, I sometimes hear something else.
A comparison of their Day 1 with someone else’s Day 10,000.
They meet a senior executive with the markings of a long career, accomplishments, confidence or impact, and wonder what they are doing wrong because they haven’t figured it all out yet.
My answer is almost always:
Nothing. You are doing nothing wrong.
In fact, you are probably more self-aware at this stage than many of us were.
We just don’t talk enough about what the journey actually looked like before the accomplishments.
Perhaps that is why, with my birthday approaching and all the reflective thoughts that naturally come with another year, I have found myself thinking about the journey from graduation to where I am today.
The good.
The bad.
The ugly.
The unexpected turns.
The things I got right.
The things I got spectacularly wrong.
The opportunities I could see.
And the ones I could not even have imagined existed.
So, for the young people who keep asking me “how”, and perhaps for anyone else standing at the beginning of their own journey, here is a little of my story.
I remember the young girl who had just graduated with a degree in Human Resources.
She had dreams of conquering the world, but her understanding of what an HR career could become was still relatively small.
When I started my four-year Bachelor’s degree, the immediate career options I could see were fairly straightforward: become an HR Officer in a manufacturing company, or return to university as a Graduate Assistant and eventually become a lecturer or professor.
My plans were simple.
Graduate.
Complete NYSC.
Start my CIPM examinations.
And fulfil the commitment I had made to my dad to become the youngest Fellow of CIPM.
As those four years progressed, my academic and personal reading introduced me to the work of people like Tayo Fashoyin and Abel Ubeku, whose contributions to labour relations, HR practice and national development helped me begin to see that the profession could have an impact far beyond the walls of an organisation.
But I still had no idea what my own journey would look like.
Then came graduation and my NYSC posting.
Akintola Williams Deloitte.
My first reaction?
“I am not an accountant. I don’t want to be an auditor.”
I even contemplated asking to be rejected and trying my luck with one of the leading FMCGs around Ilupeju, where Deloitte was located at the time.
Thankfully, the lady I met when I presented my posting letter at the office was gracious enough to tell me that beyond working in their internal HR department, there was also an opportunity to work in HR Consulting.
My focus immediately changed.
I needed to pass the competitive entry examinations and get into Consulting.
I did.
And I was posted to Human Capital Consulting.
That decision changed my life.
It was there that I discovered that HR could be so much more.
I discovered business.
Strategy.
Commercial thinking.
Consulting.
I began to understand that people do not exist separately from the businesses they work in, and that great HR professionals must understand far more than HR.
Interestingly, I discovered my love for commerce there too, and started selling perfumes and customised office shirts for women.
Looking back, those little ventures taught me something important.
I was curious about business.
I wanted to understand how things worked.
I wanted to create value.
And I was beginning to realise that the world was much bigger than the career options I had initially imagined.
So I made a decision very early in my career.
I did not know everything.
But I was going to learn.
I would learn every major dimension of HR and become fluent across the profession.
I would understand the organisation I worked in, not just from the people perspective, but from the perspective of strategy, finance, operations, technology, products, sales, marketing and ultimately, value creation.
I would keep asking:
What else is there to learn?
That curiosity eventually became what we now describe as a T-shaped career.
Deep technical expertise in HR, combined with broad exposure across business disciplines.
It also meant deliberately seeking opportunities across different industries and environments.
Consulting.
Telecommunications.
Banking.
Financial services.
Technology.
Non-profit.
In-house HR leadership.
Consulting and business advisory.
Professional institutions.
Academia.
Policy.
National impact.
Over the years, that journey has taken me much further than the young graduate preparing for NYSC could have imagined.
I have had the privilege of leading HR teams and organisations, advising leaders and boards, and contributing to business and people outcomes across different sectors and geographies.
I have contributed to HR policy and professional practice in Nigeria.
At the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management, I headed the Consultancy and Research Department, contributing to HR research, professional practice and best-practice assessment across organisations in Nigeria, while driving research partnerships with international institutions.
I have had the privilege of teaching and contributing to the development of future HR professionals as faculty at Lagos Business School’s HR Academy and through my work on the HR Professional Advisory Group at Edinburgh Napier University, contributing an industry perspective to the important conversation between academia and the world of work.
And perhaps one of the experiences that most reminds me of how far the journey has travelled was participating in international labour policy at the International Labour Organization.
As a member of the Standard-Setting Committee on Decent Work in the Platform Economy, I participated in the process that culminated in the adoption of Convention No. 193 at the 114th International Labour Conference in Geneva.
To go from reading about ILO conventions and international labour standards to participating in the development of one was a full-circle moment I could never have planned as a young graduate.
And then there are the things that do not always make it onto a CV.
The leaders I have quietly advised.
The institutions I have contributed to.
The people whose careers I have helped shape.
The young professionals I continue to mentor.
The national-impact initiatives where I have had the privilege of advising leaders behind the scenes and watching with joy as those initiatives eventually impacted people across the country.
The organisational decisions I have stood firmly behind because I believed they were right for people and the institution, even when doing so came with personal discomfort or risk.
And the young adults and teenagers whose lives I have been privileged to touch through teaching, mentoring and service.
Some of those people may never know my name.
Some may never know that an HR professional somewhere stood her ground for them, sometimes even at personal risk.
Because perhaps that is what impact really means.
Not simply how much you achieve for yourself.
But how many people, institutions, professions and systems are better because you passed through them
Years ago, my dream was to make my father proud by becoming the youngest Fellow of CIPM.
This year, I also earned Chartered Fellow recognition from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the UK.
Two Chartered Fellowships.
One young girl’s dream.
And a God who has consistently done more with my small prayers and limited imagination than I could have done with my biggest plans.
That is why birthdays feel different to me now.
They are not simply celebrations of another year.
They are reminders of the distance travelled.
And perhaps that is also why I hope the young people I engage with now develop a different perception of graduation.
Because every graduation is a beginning disguised as an ending.
The young person standing at graduation today cannot possibly see the full road ahead.
And that is okay.
You don’t need to.
When I graduated, I did not know I would work across multiple industries.
I did not know I would become an HR leader.
I did not know I would advise boards and institutions.
I did not know I would contribute to national initiatives.
I did not know I would participate in global labour policy.
I did not know I would teach at a business school.
I did not know I would contribute to the work of two AACSB-accredited institutions, including through an industry advisory role at Edinburgh Napier University.
I did not know I would earn dual Chartered Fellowships, including Chartered Fellow recognition from CIPD in the UK.
I did not know any of it.
I simply knew that I wanted to learn, do meaningful work and keep becoming better.
And that is the answer I give the young people who keep asking me:
How did you know?
I didn’t.
How did you know you would not fail?
I didn’t.
How did you figure it all out?
I didn’t.
I just kept moving.
I kept learning.
I kept saying yes to opportunities that stretched me and stepping forward to solve problems in rooms I had not yet imagined I would occupy.
I kept saying no when my values required it.
I kept finding people who knew things I didn’t and learning from them.
I kept trying.
I failed sometimes.
I started again.
And I trusted God with the parts of the journey I could not see.
So, if you are young and reading this while wondering whether your dream is valid, whether you are behind, whether everyone else seems to have figured it out except you, or whether you will ever get to where you want to go:
Please stop comparing your Day 1 with someone else’s Day 10,000.
There is a version of you that exists today because of every lesson, every disappointment, every mentor, every opportunity, every mistake and every small step you are taking now.
Your job is not to have the entire journey figured out.
Your job is to take the next step, whatever that looks like for you.
And trust God with the rest.
Because I have discovered something I wish that young girl fresh out of university had known:
Sometimes, the life God builds with your dreams is infinitely bigger than the life you knew how to imagine for yourself.
As Ephesians 3:20 (AMPC) reminds us:
“Now to Him Who, by the action of His power that is at work within us, is able to carry out His purpose and do superabundantly, far over and above all that we dare ask or think…”
So, on this birthday, this grateful girl simply says:
Thank You, God.
For the journey.
For the people.
For the opportunities.
For the lessons.
For the impact.
For the rooms I never knew existed.
And for the grace to keep becoming.
To the young graduate standing at the beginning of the road:
You don’t have to know how you will get there.
Just start.
Your Day 10,000 is being built by what you do with Day 1.
And who knows?
One day, you may look back at the person you were at the beginning and realise that the journey turned out to be far more beautiful than you ever imagined.
For me?
It is still Day 1.
Still learning.
Still building.
Still serving.
Still dreaming.
Still becoming.
Still God’s girl. 
#GiGi #GodsGirl #GratefulGirl #GlobalGirl #CareerJourney #Leadership #FutureOfWork #HumanResources