Hometown:  Lagos, Nigeria

 

Focus Area:

Impact Investing, Social Entrepreneurship, Startup Advisory and Business and Human Rights

 

Experience Prior to LL.M.

I worked at a boutique law firm in Lagos focusing on Private Equity, Tax and general Corporate Finance. I was also Legal Adviser for a charity that provides pro bono legal assistance to survivors of domestic and gender-based violence.

 

 

Why Columbia?

Sighs! The question is, “why not?” The truth is, while I strangely wasn’t a fan of New York City itself, I fell in love with Columbia’s course offerings at the intersection of Business and Human Rights, especially the Human Rights Clinic.

 

 

 

Most Memorable CLS Experience

I had way too many but for me the one thing I took away from the LL.M. class was the relationships. Since then I have had coffee in Russia with a colleague from the class, had lunch in Nairobi with another colleague, gone to India for the wedding of a friend and colleague, and had dinner in London with yet another person from the class. Those are priceless experiences and I’ll forever be grateful for CLS for giving me a familiar face in almost every major city in the world.

 

 

Life After LL.M.

I had a couple of post graduate fellowships after the LL.M. program, so right after, I worked with the Columbia Center for Sustainable Investment (CCSI), then with the International Senior Lawyer Project, where I worked with social entrepreneurs and communities in Kenya negatively impacted by large scale development projects.

 

Now I run my own legal practice, Vazi Legal, focused on impact investing and frontier technologies. I also run Scale My Hustle, a social enterprise that gives African entrepreneurs free resources to grow their business. Finally, I’m a partner at TipHub, an early-stage investment fund that invests in impact focused companies in Africa and in the diaspora.