Name: Carl Oshodi PhD
Organization: African Youth Union Commission
Role: Chairperson & Co-Founder
Carl is presently managing a group of global pan-African industry sector corporate firm – AI Group as its Chief Executive Officer. AI Group Africa is a consortium of professional industry sector service providers in more than 30 countries.
Carl began his career with the firm – now AI-Group Inc. in 2007. He was hired by Julius Obaseki – Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Safety 2000 LTD to position the firm dwindling personnel performance structure, he left the company in 2016 after his contract ended.
Carl Oshodi started as an apprentice consultant with Setin Company Nigeria Limited in 2001 as an intern Industry Psychologist, and over the span of his career, has demonstrated uncommon and superior success at all key functions of several firms he has worked. His primary areas of client oversight include engagement architecture and results delivery, business-wide analytics and new offsite and in-site clientele satisfaction development.
Beyond his more than 17 years of management consulting and business leadership experience, Carl’s specific consulting areas of expertise include Corporate Governance, inventory management and logistics, sales force effectiveness, green-field launch and overall asset utilization and profitability performance. He is highly skilled in both analytical and implementation aspects of consulting field. He possesses a long-standing track record of success with clients in Africa, North America and Europe; and is well recognized as one of the youngest player in the Consulting industry from around the world.
The day everything almost fell apart:
Through the very import of my career, my vision has always been to give Africa a new face and position her as a leader in the world stage. The idea of this vision was to join emerging African leaders to innovate, share, collaborate and partner to provide comprehensive solutions to harness the potentials inherent in Africa and of Africans and its natural resources.
Over the course of 15 years of my career in Civil Society and Private sector, I have never seen a harsh, yet acceptable challenges like the one I was confronted between 2011to 2019. These eight (8) years of my private sector career and social engagement in this challenging space, came about birthing ideas, standing firm to support these ideas to be reality; nurturing, investing and sacrificing every ounces of happiness.
Most of the ideas that I co-created today were the very institution present in both local, national, regional and continent wide spheres in Africa are platforms that houses hundreds and thousands of Afro-Champions – who are themselves social and community builders and entrepreneurs currently. Living life depends on the choices we make on our way up, whether we want to be defeatist or we want to achieve goals – no matter the difficult times things turns out to be. For the importance of contributing my quota on the path towards Africa’s unity, development and progress, I could say, it has been challenging. And despite the odds, the evidences are simply never to give up or allow the attitude or behavior of others weigh us down.
One of the many ray of hope the many challenges birthed was the social inclusion pioneering the African Youth Union Commission – an independent Youth cluster hugely concerned with empowering young people on the continent with capacities, focusing on entrepreneurship and leadership of young people. As a Youth inclusion group, the AYUC is a policy participatory youth-based business and leadership mainstreaming ecosystem that rallies youths both in Africa and those living in the diaspora for the singular purpose of Africa unity and socioeconomic development. Over the cause of 3yrs, I served as its executive chairperson supporting and nurturing [along amazing young leaders] to grow the youth support platform.
In January 2017, everything I believed almost came crashing. This was the very moment that tested me and ushered in series of traumas that developed even further into the stamina to push for progress. When I and about three others young Africa leaders birthed the AYUC, I was facing backlogs of financial and emotional stress with loss of a Brother to protracted illness and two children to Lasser Fever. What kept me going was the believe that, in life, especially in business arena, it was the sleepless nights of hope, which enabled me to develop solutions for my private sector business that has grown into a Pan African industry Sector Group.
As founder of the Africa Industrialization Group Inc., the unique threshold of trials and challenges helped me to foster collaboration and business cooperation with interest companies, and like any other businesses distinguished us through our commitment, sacrifice, investment and understanding of market forces. With all the medical conditions that have been and still are part of my life, I sought therapy, then made the decision to accept myself as I am.
Acknowledging that my body is not the same it used to be, learning to be kind to myself, compassionate and listening to my body. I have learnt to rest, not apologize for not being able to do strenuous physical activities and to make peace with a lifetime of taking medication every single day.