Tope Fajingbesi Balogun

I celebrate an amazing woman today. A woman who has inspired so many. Tope Fajingbesi Balogun is a Nigerian-American social entrepreneur, and an Agribusiness lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park in the USA. She is also the author of the amazon.com best selling novel, Love in Cancun, Soulful Whispers and What Colour is Your Money? She created and hosts Impact Africa’s radio and She-EO programs that inspire and enable personal and community development in Africa and Africans. She also invests considerable time and energy into creating a better world for children from low-income families through the education, healthcare and social welfare initiatives of United for Kids Foundation, an organization she co-founded in 2002 and which she continues to serve as its Executive Director/Coordinating Trustee (Pro-Bono).

Tope obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, where she was the best graduating student in the College of Business Administration. She also obtained a Master’s in Business Administration from the Goizueta Business School of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Prior to embracing her calling to be an inspirational speaker and teacher, Tope was an accountant and financial coach. She is a U.S. Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a Nigerian Chartered Accountant (1999 ICAN prize-winner). She joined the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in 2009, and rose to the rank of Assistant Director of Financial Services at AFT’s Washington DC headquarters.

She also invented “money colour”, a revolutionary system that helps individuals understand and improve their relationship with money.

Tope acquired more than 17 years’ accounting and financial management experience working with Big Four public accounting firms (Arthur Andersen and PricewaterhouseCoopers), Fortune 500 corporations, and non-profit organizations across the USA and Nigeria between 1998 and 2015. She was ranked as one of America’s Top 11 financial coaches by www.badcredit.org in 2014.

Tope’s efforts earned her an award at the Nigeria Centenary USA Awards ceremony in New York City on September 27^th 2014. Tope’s main life mission is inspiring and empowering her tribe to find, fund and fully unleash their purpose driven lives so they can be the change makers they were created to be. She merges her hobbies (traveling and writing) with a deep love for, and commitment to her faith and home country, Nigeria by visiting regularly, speaking to various audiences and blogging about living on purpose at www.ganiyah.com. Tope was one of 30 African leaders invited to the U.S. White House in preparation for the 2014 U.S.-Africa leaders’ summit in May 2014, and President Obama’s Eid reception for Muslim Americans in July 2016. In addition to working on Secretary Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as an organizer in Michigan, Tope had the honour of giving the field pitch at Mrs. Clinton’s final presidential campaign rally in Grand Rapids Michigan on November 7, 2016. She was also the keynote speaker at the prestigious Grand Rapids City High School 2017 graduation ceremony on June 6, 2017. Tope has been featured on Channels TV, WFM 91.7FM, Voice of America TV and major print media publications such as Sun News. Tope strongly believes that the best teacher is one who is him/herself a student, therefore she seeks coaching and learning opportunities from home and abroad. 

“The empowered woman is powerful beyond measure and beautiful beyond description”- Steve Maraboli

Please drop your comments below or send an email if you have inspiring stories to share with us here. Thanks.

Have a lovely weekend guys

(http://ganiyah.com/about/tfaj/)