Elizabeth Okonji is an award-winning people and culture leader who combines her experience in human resources with an ability to optimise business operations and drive strategic leadership development for business growth.
She has spent the last two decades working across various industries to catalyse effective business growth through people, having made an early career pivot from being an IT Analyst to choosing to program people for productivity instead. Now serving at C-Suite and Board Advisory level, she is focused on developing the people function to enable more people have better working lives for the economy.
Elizabeth is currently the Chief People Officer at SeamlessHR, driving the intentional people strategy to help African businesses be more productive and successful, and to help working people in Africa enjoy a better life. Before this, she had been the Chief People Officer at Renmoney, where she championed the people and culture transformation that enabled the business to scale rapidly into a leading fintech company in Nigeria. Her career history also includes roles at MTN Nigeria, Interswitch Group and Afriglobal Group among others, where she has led process reorganisation, built strong teams, and drove company-wide change in different capacities. She is also the Founder of TGL Labs, an organisation that partners with growing businesses and individuals to creatively unlock their potential to succeed.
Elizabeth has received some national and international recognition for her work, including recently being listed among, “The Top 20 Disruptive People Leaders in Nigeria 2023”, by Disruptive People, UK; as well as one of the “Most Outstanding and Impactful Women in Leadership 2023”, by The Guardian, Nigeria. She was also awarded a Ph.D by the Institute of Leadership Manpower and Management Development (ILMMD), for her contributions to HR development and administration in Nigeria and beyond.
She is passionate about youth empowerment and professional development, so she has spent years contributing to the education, skills acquisition, and business setup for young people. She is a leadership and career coach, certified by the International Coach Federation (ICF). She is also a developmental speaker and contributes thought-leadership content for HR thought-drivers like the HR Bootcamp (Nigeria) and HackingHR (USA).
Elizabeth is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), UK; a Member of the International Association Facilitators (IAF); and a Distinguished Fellow of the ILMMD. She holds a BSc. in Geography from Delsu in Nigeria, an MSc. in HRM from the Robert Gordon University in Scotland.
She serves on several Advisory Boards and is married with two kids.