We started ALA to mentor business leaders to succeed – Founder
L-R: Christopher Stephenson, Faculty, Ausso Leadership Academy ; Tosin Adefeko, President, Ausso Leadership Academy Alumni Association; Austin Okere, Founder & Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Ausso Leadership Academy; and Mike Mornu, Vice President, Ausso Leadership Academy Alumni Association, at the Academy’s Alumni Inaugural Launch held in Lekki phase1 on Jan 30th 2020.
The Founder of Computer Wharehouse Group otherwise known as CWG Plc also the founder of Ausso Leadership Academy (ALA), Mr. Austin Okere, has said that the rationale behind the establishment of Ausso Leadership Academy was to mentor business leaders and entrepreneurs to scale their businesses geometrically for shared prosperity and national growth.
He made the disclosure at the formal inauguration and the maiden get-together party of the Ausso Leadership Academy Alumni Association held in Lekki, Lagos yesterday.
Mr. Okere said after establishing the GWC Plc and nurtured it to a world class company which won the Global Growth Company by the World Economic Forum in 2014, that he needed a platform to share his experiences to others coming behind him that would help them to avoid the mistakes he made.
According to him, “The reason why I started the academy was to mentor business leaders and entrepreneurs, to scale their companies geometrically, so that they can optimize the job they create, and in so doing, we have shared prosperity. The long and short reason is that I set it up for shared prosperity.
“Because I believe that a candle loses nothing by lighting other candles, in fact if anything at all, it makes the room brighter. So if we had made mistakes, let’s coach others coming behind us so that they should not make the same mistakes we made.
“So impression actually was stronger, because the Columbia Business School in New York, when we were made a global growth company by World Economic Forum, they wrote a case study, about our company and they invited me to Columbia to speak to the case study when they were treating it. They invited me for so many times and they later gave me the Adjunct Faculty position as Entrepreneur in Resident. So, I was teaching at Columbia Business School about Entrepreneurship in Emerging Market with specific emphases on technology sector.
“After so many years of that, it was very clear how to set up an institution that will not be theoretical or just merely academic in nature but must be practical.
The two differentiations at the Ausso Leadership Academy is that our programmes are practical, and the case study is your own company so we are not going to talk about another company but your own company.
He said the goal of the Academy is to impact 250 people to scale up their businesses geometrically every year.
The President of the ALA Alumni Association, Tosin Adefeko, in her speech at the event said ulltimate the goal of the Association is to create shared prosperity that will affect the Nigerian dream positively.
She said the common goal of the association will run on three pillars namely: internal networking group; support for the academy as well as serve as a conduit for national development.
The alumni of the Academy testified of how the Academy has impacted their lives and businesses positively.
