I had been aware of Wimbìź from its founding year, the concept was interesting but not high on my priority at that time. Timing as they say is crucial because our times and seasons vary.
I enjoyed the gist and snippets of information I gathered about the conferences and other activity and at that time it was more than enough for me, somehow you hear more social gist than substance, perhaps people were hoarding the real value, were making light of the substance within or didn’t know how to express the value they were getting from the organisation and the networks.
Over the years as I got more grounded in my business space I began to feel the need to connect with other professional women for many reasons:
- Network outside my sector: I knew I needed to start meeting people across sectors, outside my existing network and building relationships in professional and structured organizations. WIMBIZ immediately came to mind.
- Benchmarking: I needed this to myself against my superiors and to a lesser degree my peers particularly to get a closer look at their business and career trajectory to model mine.
- Equip myself with a broader economic, business and personal knowledge on a range of topics that wouldn’t normally cross my space.
- Expose myself to more Nigeria business practice, exposure and methods, having worked only as an entrepreneur in a self structured environment I was naturally curious to have a range of people to check in with.
- Consolidate my social responsibility activity towards women, entrepreneurs, youth etc that over the years had spread across about many organisations, Fate Foundation, Lagos Business Schools EDC, Success Digest Leadership Academy, the IFCs STEP program & several tertiary educational facilities in the south west.
I attended a few annual lectures and conferences depending on whether I liked the speaker, found the theme interesting and even in some cases based on too numerous to ignore text and email from wimbiz devotees.
The events I attended were worth it and easily was value for money. That’s how the journey started, continued, deepened and improved, then I joined the devotees in pulling people formerly like me into the fold.
Come and give it a try and make up your mind from an inside perspectives. You will be pleasantly surprised.