Biden appoints two Nigerian-Americans as advisers

The United States President, Joe Biden, has appointed two professionals who are of Nigerian descent as special advisers.

Both Osagie Imasogie and Chineye Ogwumike were part of the 12 members of the President’s Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement in the United States. The appointment was contained in a statement released by the State House on Wednesday.

Congratulating the duo on the appointment, the Chairperson of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), Abike Dabiri-Erewa, said their recognition and appointment into the 12-member advisory council is a motivation for other Nigerians and Africans in general.

“The nomination of the two great Nigerians into the advisory council is a welcome development,” she said on Wednesday in a statement by the commission’s spokesman, Abdur-Rahman Balogun.

Chinenye Ogwumike is a two-time WNBA All-Star for the Los Angeles Sparks and a full-time, multi-platform ESPN commentator and NBA analyst.

She is one of the only full-time professional athletes to also currently hold a full-time regular national sports media broadcast position.

Ogwumike was the 2014 WNBA Rookie of the Year and is a two-time WNBA All-Star (2014, 2018). She is proudly Nigerian-American and graduated from Stanford University with an International Relations degree under the mentorship of Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

In August 2020, she became the first Black woman to host a national daily sports-talk radio show.

The 2021 Forbes 30 under 30 honoree also holds the title of Executive Producer, producing an ESPN Films documentary “144” on the 2020 WNBA season.

Osagie Imasogie, on the other hand, is the Chairman of the Investment Bank and SEC/FINRA registered Broker-Dealer, Quoin Capital and Quoin Advisors.

In addition, Imasogie is a co-founder of PIPV Capital, a private equity firm that is focused on the life sciences vertical and has invested over $1 billion into that industry.

Prior to co-founding PIPV Capital, he established GlaxoSmithKline Ventures and was its founding Vice President.

Imasogie has held senior commercial and R&D positions within pharmaceutical companies such as GSK, SmithKline Beecham, and DuPont Merck. He has also been a Price Waterhouse Corporate Finance Partner as well as a practising attorney with leading U.S. law firm, Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis.

Imasogie is a serial entrepreneur and investor who serves on the board of a number of financial institutions such as FS-KKR Capital Corp and Haverford Trust, institutions that cumulatively manage over $28 billion. He is an adviser to Brown Advisory, a firm that manages in excess of $140 billion.

Imasogie is the Vice-Chair of the Executive Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a member of the Executive Committee and Chair of the Nominating & Governance Committee of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center.

In addition, Imasogie is a Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, a member of the Executive Committee of the University, and is also the Chairman of the Board of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where he is an Adjunct Professor of Intellectual Property.

Imasogie holds LLM degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, and is a member of the New York State Bar in addition to being admitted to practice in other jurisdictions.