19: Dr Bola Olabisi: Championing Women Inventors and Innovators

Dr Bola Olabisi my guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast is the founder of the Global Women Inventors and Innovators Network. She set it up in 1998 in recognition of the challenges that women face in bringing commercially viable products to market. Over the past two decades she has worked tirelessly to spotlight inventors and innovators across the world. I was lucky to be a part of her journey when she launched the awards in Africa a long time ago and was privileged to be invited to be a judge alongside an eminent panel for the 22nd GlobalWIIN awards last year. In the past Bola has been a Member of the Advisory Group of the European Commission’s Network of Women In Decision Making In Politics And The Economy; a consultant on Global Innovation Outlook under Women’s Entrepreneurship for IBM and a Governor on the Board of the University of East London. Recognised in 2019, by the Mayor of London as one of the 100 WOMEN THAT MAKE LONDON GREAT listen to Dr Olabisi speak about her passion and what drives her 👇🏾 Listen to the full episode here 👇🏾 https://thepurposeroom.org/podcast/ Follow the show on your favourite platforms iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts Listen to the audiogram here 👇🏾 Shownotes 👉🏾 At the time, I don't think that I went out looking to set up the GlobalWIIN network. I happened to stumble into a gap. And I've been brought up to be that kind of person where you see the need to bridge that gap and you just go for it. If you feel that you have the capabilities to do it. And so I've found that at that time, there were very little that was known about inventors both men and women. Historically we had more male inventors very very few women were known to have invented anything. In most cases, they would tell about Marie Curie and that will be the end of it. And there was a need to be able to show that we do have the intelligence. Women have the capabilities. And I felt that somehow we hadn't fully utilised and promoted what women were capable of doing. I thought, what could I do about it? One of the things that I do know how to do is to network and to be able to bring together a huge amount of expertise, knowledge and encouragement from people that I know in order to set up the network that specialising in putting the spotlight on women, inventors and innovators. 👉🏾 I quickly realised that this was an area that we needed to look at and applied for a PhD, I needed to do more research. And I was already working in this particular area. I felt that we needed to promote more role models of ingenious women and the role that they play in society. I was on the right track in terms of the work that I was doing, that I was partnering with the right kind of partners. Many of them within these educational institutions, being able to take that on board and move it into a direction that would advance the women who at the time have a very challenging journey to be able to move up the ladder. Now in terms of the European funded project that you speak about I would say it's the same sort of thing in the sense that we had a lot of women who are working extremely hard, who are bringing their remarkable work, but very little was being put in terms of putting the spotlight on their achievements. And I felt that if you're not in a leadership position, it can be extremely hard to influence decisions. So you need to be successful. You need to be able to make those decisions. 👉🏾 And I was so delighted when I was asked where the GlobalWIIN would be a partner in this EU funded research project, which cuts across five countries. And we looked at the results. We did our research. We looked at women innovators in particular and tried to see how, when bringing their innovative ideas within the workplace, How is it being received? Are they easily seen as a challenge or are they seen as an invaluable asset within the workplace? And how do they incorporate them at top...