{"id":5350,"date":"2021-03-01T08:18:04","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T08:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/?p=5350"},"modified":"2021-03-01T13:12:07","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T13:12:07","slug":"girls-arts-and-she-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/2021\/03\/girls-arts-and-she-voices","title":{"rendered":"Girls, Arts, and She-Voices"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first started as a graphic designer within Nigeria’s publishing and advertising industry, there were absolutely no women in this space, zilch! Occupying such a male dominated space solo could have been intimidating; however, I found myself oddly undaunted. I quickly recognised that it gave me a unique opportunity to increase women’s visibility in the creative space by establishing a distinct perspective that broadened the general outlook, one project after the other.<\/p>\n

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Thanks to a combination of hard-won emotional intelligence and open-minded supervisors, I was able to navigate different opportunities where a ‘fresh’ angle was frequently much needed and welcomed. It was by no means a smooth ride; I quickly learnt that Nigeria is definitely a patriarchal society, where the feminine voice is either shunned or shut down. This experience never deterred me; in fact,\u00a0I would say it made me even more determined and dogged in ‘louding my voice’ to make sure that there was a space for me and other women creatives that eventually found their way into the industry over the years.<\/p>\n

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I never shy away from bringing my femininity to the workplace. When I worked as a young Art Director in advertising, I remember when I decided that the creative team needed a library. As a woman, I felt the need to nurture the minds of everyone in that space. I brought the idea up to the management team, identified a space and even donated the first set of books. I also tasked everyone to buy a book and donate it to the library. The CEO was at first a bit sceptical, but then ended up being the first to comply and then the rest was history. Our very first library was born! When I left the organisation, they named this space after me. I will always think back on it and smile, content that I was able to leave a mark.<\/p>\n

I believe in building inclusive workspaces, especially for the underrepresented. These days, I find joy in coaching and training the newbies as I continue to address the status quo of an ever-evolving work environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first started as a graphic designer within Nigeria’s publishing and advertising industry, there were absolutely no women in this space, zilch! Occupying such a male dominated space solo could have been intimidating; however, I found myself oddly undaunted. I quickly recognised that it gave me a unique opportunity to increase women’s visibility in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5350"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5388,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5350\/revisions\/5388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}