Building systems that put world-class thinking within reach of the people who need it most
Impact strategist | EdTech founder | Author | Faith-driven builder working across education, social impact, and systems change — from New York to Africa and beyond
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I Build For The Gap
My brain has always been wired to see what is missing and then build something to close it. That instinct has driven every significant thing I have done: a child safety brand built from nothing, a decade of impact work across eight countries, a graduate degree funded almost entirely by faith and crowdfunding, and now an AI-powered learning platform for children to deepen foundational learning skills.
I am Ugochi Obidiegwu. Impact strategist, EdTech founder, author, and a woman who has learned a lot on her way to solving difficult problems.
The Origin
In 2013, I lost my mother to a road traffic accident. I was a cabin crew member and safety officer at the time, and I watched in real time as the people around me wanted to help, but did not know how. That moment planted a question I could not shake: what if more people simply knew what to do?
Three years later, that question became The Safety Chic, a child safety social enterprise I built from scratch, with limited resources, but very clear conviction. Over the next decade, The Safety Chic grew into a globally recognised brand: storybooks published in English and French and available on Amazon, a safety education game app, an annual School Safety Summit, speaking engagements on stages from Lagos to Las Vegas to Brussels to Sydney, and training that reached children across eight countries. Our work was recognised as good practice by ENETOSH and featured by the UN OHCHR. I was named a Mandela Washington Fellow by the US government and a Tony Elumelu Entrepreneur because of my commitment to solving my highlighted problem.
The Safety Chic taught me everything I now know about building systems that reach people who were never the intended audience. It also showed me that passion without structure is not enough, and that the most sustainable impact comes from organisations that are built well from the inside out.
What I Do Now
Today, I work at the intersection of impact strategy, education technology, and systems change. I founded Ednaimo, an AI-native adaptive learning platform designed to close the foundational learning gap for children. It is culturally grounded, curriculum-aligned, and built for scale at a cost that makes sense for the markets it serves.
I write ImpactVantage, a LinkedIn newsletter for impact-oriented founders and social entrepreneurs navigating the evolving landscape of blended finance, philanthropic capital, and organisational positioning. Each edition is designed to put the kind of strategic thinking usually reserved for well-resourced organisations into the hands of the builders who need it most.
Through UGIP Foundation, I support young people across four pillars: education and scholarships, substance abuse recovery, emotional wellness, and a mentorship community for emerging African leaders. Our I-MOMS programme prepares high school students for higher education, and our digital skills training supports recovered drug users in Northern Nigeria to reintegrate into society with dignity.
I am currently pursuing a Doctor of Education to deepen the academic foundation beneath everything I build and advocate for in the education and systems change space.
Faith and Writing
I am also a writer in the most personal sense of the word. My latest book, Stories of Faith: A Girl's Walk With Her Lord, is an honest account of what it looks like to follow God through the impossible, funding a graduate degree at NYU almost entirely on faith, building a global platform with very little, and learning that obedience is almost always the most strategic move you can make.
Faith is not a footnote in my professional story. It is the engine. The Safety Chic began with a conversation with God. Ednaimo is being built in the same spirit. I do not separate what I believe from what I build, and I have found that the people who resonate most with my work are the ones who understand why.
Recognition
My work has been recognised by the NYU Martin Luther King Changemaker Award (2024), the NYU Robert Berne Award for Leadership (2024), the Africa Safety Awards for Excellence (2019), and the WeForGood list of 100 Women Creating a Better Africa (2020), among others. I have been featured in BellaNaija, She Leads Africa, The Guardian, the YALI Network, and the Tony Elumelu Foundation blog, and I am a TEDx speaker.
Beyond the Work
I am a Nigerian woman living in New York, doing the work of building across two worlds simultaneously and finding that the distance between them is exactly where the most interesting problems live.