What I’d Tell You is a Kryvent series featuring experienced leaders across the social impact ecosystem. In each conversation, we ask them to look back on what they’ve built and what they’ve learnt from occupying different roles within the sector. The aim is to pass something useful on to the next generation of nonprofit and social enterprise founders building across Africa.

Today’s guest has spent more than a decade working at the intersection of entrepreneurship, finance, and economic development across Africa. She began her career at a community centre in Birmingham, returned to Nigeria in 2017, and has since co-founded ZSE Group while advising programmes focused on MSME development, investment readiness, and financial inclusion at the international level.

Hello, can we meet you?

Hi, I’m Yemisi Ajeojo, a finance and entrepreneurship ecosystem builder dedicated to enabling access to finance and markets for African entrepreneurs by collaborating with for-profit, nonprofit, and government organisations worldwide. For more than a decade, I’ve been asking myself a simple question that still guides everything I do: how do we build systems that allow more people to genuinely take part in economic opportunity? That question has led me into classrooms, community centres, boardrooms, startup hubs, policy discussions, and markets across Africa.

I started my career at a community centre in the UK, working with immigrants, low-income families, and people rebuilding their lives. I wasn’t thinking of it as career-building then. I was helping where I could, supporting programme design, writing proposals, and trying to measure whether anything we were doing actually worked. Looking back, that period shaped everything. It taught me that strategy is useless if it doesn’t improve someone’s real life.

Since returning to Nigeria in 2017, I’ve worked across entrepreneurship, youth employment, women’s economic empowerment, and financial inclusion. I co-founded Zitere Social Enterprise Limited, an umbrella for Triift Africa, Akkant BPO, and Idea to Funded. Through our programmes we’ve supported thousands of MSMEs and worked alongside organisations including UNDP, the British Council, World Bank partners, Visa Foundation, and Mastercard Foundation. I’ve trained entrepreneurs in more than 25 countries, contributed to investment readiness programmes, and I currently advise on entrepreneurship, MSME development, youth employment, and policy reform.

At the heart of it all, I’m still deeply interested in people. The woman running a small business who cannot access capital, the founder with a strong idea but no structure, the ecosystem leader trying to make sure their work actually creates real outcomes. Those are the people I think about in everything I do.

Looking back at the younger Yemisi in Birmingham, would any of what you’ve built have been on her list?

No, not at all.

If you had asked me back then, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine any of this.

Looking back, my list was much smaller then. I was basically in survival mode, trying to figure out how everything connected. I knew I liked helping people, and I knew I liked numbers, but I didn’t yet know how those two things could sit in the same life.

If you told younger Yemisi that she would eventually design programmes for the World Bank or advise on policy for the UNDP, she would probably have laughed. Back then, “building” meant helping one person at a time: writing a CV for an immigrant who just arrived in the UK, helping a low-income mother figure out her household budget, or figuring out how to get a small grant for a youth project. That was my world.

I didn’t have words like “ecosystem building” or “impact investment” in my vocabulary. I just knew I didn’t like the fact that talent is everywhere but opportunity isn’t. What I did have was a strong need to be useful. I didn’t want a quiet, predictable career where I was just doing tasks with no real connection to people. I wanted to see that what I did actually changed something for someone.

And when I look back now, I realise the scale changed, but the core didn’t.

The younger Yemisi was already doing the work: the NYSC days when I was training young people on digital skills, the late nights co-founding Triift Africa, and the early sessions of the Ilorin Digital Summit. So, while the specific titles and the global stage weren’t on that Birmingham list, the foundation was there. I was learning how to speak the language of finance while keeping my heart in the community. Everything I do today is just that younger version of me, but with more data, bigger frameworks, and a slightly louder microphone.

Around 2018 to 2020 you were holding down a public sector role while building Cirkle Labs on the side. What was that season like, and where did you find the line between ambition and burnout?

That season was a lot. I was working at the Kwara State Public-Private Partnership Bureau, gaining exposure to public sector reform and understanding how governments think about development and investment. At the same time, I was building Cirkle Labs, an initiative focused on improving digital literacy and employability for young people across North Central Nigeria. From the inside, it felt like carrying two different worlds at once.

I thought the solution was simple: just work more. So I did. I said yes to almost everything and convinced myself that exhaustion was a sign of commitment. But there were days I was constantly in motion – meetings, emails, travel, mentoring, projects– and yet no closer to the outcomes I actually cared about. Burnout didn’t come as a dramatic breakdown. It showed up as a lack of clarity. I couldn’t prioritise properly. I was always reacting instead of thinking.

What that period taught me was that the line between ambition and burnout is not how many hours you’re working. It’s whether your effort is aligned with your purpose and capacity. Sustainable impact requires sustainable builders. Today I’m far more intentional about where I invest my time, not because I work less, but because I’ve learned that some of the most important opportunities came not from doing more but from creating enough space to think.

Looking back, I wouldn’t trade that season for anything. It gave me a front-row seat to government, business, and grassroots entrepreneurship all at once. It taught me how different parts of the ecosystem connect. And it helped me understand a lesson I still carry today: you can build ambitious things without sacrificing yourself in the process.

From the outside your career looks like a clean departure from corporate into impact work. What does it actually look like from the inside?

I actually haven’t really “left” the corporate path in the way people assume. I think that’s one of the biggest misconceptions people have when they look at my career from the outside. They see entrepreneurship, ecosystem building, advisory work, board roles, and development programmes, and assume I walked away from the corporate world. What has really changed is my work, who I work with, and how I work.

I’ve always been interested in solving complex economic and social challenges. Earlier in my career, I did that from within organisations, whether in government, consulting, or structured corporate environments. Today, I still work with institutions, corporations, development organisations, governments, and funders. The difference is that my role has evolved from executing within systems to helping shape and strengthen those systems. There was no single moment when I woke up and decided to leave corporate life. It was gradual. I just kept noticing that I was most alive when I was working across different sectors, connecting ideas, people, capital, policy, and opportunities. And the more I did that, the clearer it became that the problems I care about don’t live inside one organisation. They sit across many.

So instead of leaving one path, it was about expanding the scope of how I work. For anyone in that tension right now, I’d say this:

Don’t rush to label your decision. 

Sometimes we create false choices for ourselves. We think we must choose between corporate and entrepreneurship, between stability and impact, between structure and freedom. In reality, careers are far more fluid than that. The more important question is: where can you create the most value right now? 

For some people, that answer is inside a corporation. For others, it’s inside the government. For others, it’s building their own venture. And for some, like me, it’s moving between different worlds and helping them work better together. You don’t need to leave a path simply because everyone else says that’s what growth looks like. Growth is not about becoming a founder or about collecting titles. It is about increasing your capacity to solve meaningful problems and create value for others. Once you understand that, the decision becomes less about what you’re leaving and more about what you’re building.”

Your work has moved from employability to SME growth to capital access, always around the same question. What does it feel like from the inside when you know it’s time to move to the next thing?

It feels uncomfortable. That’s the honest answer.

Not the kind that comes from failure, but the kind that comes from success that no longer feels sufficient. Every phase of my work has been driven by the same question: How do we create more economic opportunity for people who have the talent to succeed but lack access to the right systems, resources, and networks?

The question has never changed. The tools have. There was a time when I believed employability was the answer. Through digital literacy programmes and workforce development initiatives, I saw young people gain skills, confidence, and access to jobs. That work mattered, and it changed lives. But after a while, I started noticing something. Many of the young people we were training were entering businesses that were themselves struggling. If the businesses weren’t growing, job creation would always be limited. So I moved closer to entrepreneurs. Then I spent years supporting SMEs, helping founders think through strategy, growth, sustainability, and business development. Again, progress happened. The businesses became stronger and the founders became more confident. But I noticed another pattern emerging.

A lot of these businesses weren’t failing because of ideas or effort. They were failing because of access to capital and financial systems they didn’t understand or couldn’t reach. That pulled me into finance, investment readiness, and capital access work. From the outside, it can look like switching paths. From the inside, it feels like following a problem until you reach the root. What usually tells me it’s time to move is when I realise I’m solving symptoms instead of causes. The hardest part is that every transition requires letting go of an identity that is already working. People often assume change happens because something is broken. In my experience, the more difficult changes happen when something is working quite well.

You have credibility, momentum, and people already know you for that thing. Walking away from that certainty to pursue a bigger question can feel irresponsible. But growth often requires becoming a beginner again. What helps me move is curiosity more than anything else. I pay attention to patterns. I listen to people across the ecosystem. And when enough signals point in a new direction, I try not to ignore them. That’s one of the reasons finance became such an important part of my work.

The lesson I’ve learned is that purpose is often constant while strategy evolves. If you’re deeply committed to impact, you have to be willing to update your assumptions when new information becomes available. The goal is not to stay attached to a particular method but to stay attached to the outcome. For me, that outcome has always been helping more people access economic opportunity and build sustainable futures. The path to that goal has changed several times, and I suspect it will continue to evolve.

What are the most important lessons from your early years building Triift and Cirkle that would save a young social entrepreneur real pain?

Those early years were beautiful, but also messy in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time.

Profit is the ultimate sustainability tool. In social impact spaces, people sometimes feel like talking about money reduces the purity of the mission. That’s not true. I learned the hard way that if your work can’t sustain itself financially, it can’t sustain its impact either. Real pain comes from having a brilliant vision but no cash flow to keep the lights on. Build your business model as rigorously as you build your impact model. Profit doesn’t take away from your mission; it funds the reach of it.

Systems will set you free. In the early days of Triift Africa, I was the everything officer, the strategist, the social media manager, customer support, and the accountant. The pain of burnout almost always comes from a lack of systems. If your organisation can’t run for a week without you, you don’t have a business; you have a job you can’t quit. Invest in processes, templates, and documentation early.

Guard your yes. When you start getting traction, everyone wants a piece of your time. Every yes to something misaligned with your core goals is a no to the work that actually moves the needle. Learn to say no gracefully and often.

Don’t mistake activity for impact. You can be busy for 14 hours a day and achieve nothing of substance. I spent seasons chasing vanity metrics – likes, followers, and even awards –before I realised they didn’t equate to lives changed or businesses funded. Always ask yourself: if I didn’t post this on LinkedIn, would it still be valuable? That’s how you know you’re doing real work.

Your network is your safety net. There were times when things got incredibly tough, and it wasn’t a business strategy that saved me; it was the people I had built genuine relationships with. Don’t network just to get. Build a community of people who understand the unique weight of leadership.

The hero complex is a trap. You cannot save everyone and you shouldn’t try to. Your job is to provide the tools, the systems, and the access. The founder’s job is to build. Recognising where your responsibility ends and theirs begins is the only way to stay in this work for the long haul. Build with your heart, but lead with your systems and your data.

Let’s talk about work and money. For social entrepreneurs and nonprofit founders the relationship between money and purpose can be genuinely complicated. What is your perspective on earning, financial sustainability, and doing impactful work?

For a long time, I think many of us in the social impact space inherited a belief that purpose and profit sit on opposite sides of the table. I don’t believe that anymore. Money is not the enemy of impact. In many cases, it is what allows impact to survive, scale, and outlive the founder.

My perspective on this has been shaped by watching incredible initiatives disappear because they were underfunded, and equally, watching well-resourced organisations create meaningful change because they had what it took to stay committed long enough to see results. Impact without sustainability is temporary. A founder constantly worried about paying salaries or covering operational costs spends more time surviving than solving problems. We need to stop treating money as a reward for impact and start seeing it as a resource for it.

The conversation often becomes emotional because many social entrepreneurs enter the sector to solve a problem, not to build wealth. But if we are comfortable paying lawyers, accountants, and technology providers for their expertise, why should people building solutions to complex social challenges feel guilty about earning well? The real question is not whether you make money. It is what your money enables. Does it allow you to hire talented people, improve your services, reach more communities, and stay in the work long enough to create meaningful change?

Dependency is not a strategy. If you rely on one donor, one grant, or one income stream, you are always one decision away from instability. Sustainability has to come from diversification: grants, partnerships, earned income, consulting, and investment. I don’t separate purpose and prosperity. I see them as connected. Money is not identity. It is fuel. I’ve seen people lose purpose chasing money and lose sustainability chasing impact. Both can derail you. Use money to strengthen purpose, not replace it.

When you’re in funder and institutional spaces, what are you watching builders do that makes you want to grab them and say – “not like that”?

I see this a lot, and it usually comes from a good place. Founders and social entrepreneurs care deeply about their work. But sometimes that passion makes them communicate in ways that actually reduce their chances of getting support.

One of the biggest things that makes me want to say “not like that” is when builders lead with need instead of value. They spend twenty minutes explaining how underfunded they are, how difficult the environment is, and how much support they require. Meanwhile, the funder is still trying to understand what problem they are uniquely positioned to solve and why they are the right team to solve it. Funders know the challenges exist. The question is: what is your solution and what evidence do you have that it works?

Another common mistake is confusing activity with outcomes. A founder will tell me they trained 5,000 people, held 30 workshops, and reached 100 communities. My next question is always: what changed? How many people got jobs? How many businesses increased revenue? How many women accessed capital? What measurable outcome happened because of the work?

I also see builders underestimate the importance of systems. Many founders are excellent at delivering programmes but struggle to demonstrate how those programmes can scale or survive beyond their personal involvement. In institutional spaces, people are not only investing in today’s results. They are evaluating whether the model can consistently produce results over time. The stronger answer is often found in the systems, partnerships, and teams built around the mission, not in what the founder alone has achieved.

And perhaps the biggest one of all: stop assuming that your passion is self-explanatory. You know your work intimately because you’ve lived it. The funder is hearing their fifth pitch of the day. If you cannot explain your work clearly, simply, and strategically, you create friction where there should be clarity. The people who consistently succeed in these spaces are not always the loudest or most passionate. They are the ones who can clearly show what works, how it works, and why it is worth backing.

You sit on the board of Learn Politics. That’s a deliberate choice for someone whose career is rooted in entrepreneurship. What made you say yes, and what connection do you see between civic health and the ability to build anything sustainable in Nigeria?

I said yes because over time I’ve realised something very simple: a lot of the problems entrepreneurs deal with are not actually business problems. They are system problems. For years, I worked very closely with founders, SMEs, young professionals, and development programmes. We would help businesses improve strategy, strengthen operations, access funding, and build capacity. Those interventions matter. They create jobs, increase incomes, and improve livelihoods.

But over time, I kept running into the same reality:

A business does not exist in isolation.

The entrepreneur is affected by policy. The investor is affected by regulation. The market is affected by governance. The community is affected by public institutions. You can build the most resilient business in the world, but if the broader systems around it are weak, you will spend a significant amount of energy compensating for those weaknesses. That’s what made Learn Politics compelling to me. Its mission isn’t about politics in the partisan sense. It’s about helping citizens, particularly young people, understand how governance works, how decisions are made, and how they can participate more effectively in shaping the systems that affect their lives.

I believe civic literacy is an economic issue.

When citizens don’t understand institutions, policies, budgets, or governance processes, they have limited influence over the very structures that determine access to opportunity. And when we don’t participate, we leave critical decisions about our future to a very small group of people.

One of the lessons I’ve learned through entrepreneurship is that sustainable change happens when you work both within and around systems. You can build businesses that create jobs, design programmes that improve skills, unlock access to capital, but if governance is weak or civic participation is low, everything becomes harder to sustain. So I don’t see entrepreneurship and civic engagement as separate spaces. They are deeply connected.

My decision to serve on the board was rooted in that understanding. It was an opportunity to contribute to strengthening a different part of the ecosystem, one that ultimately influences everything else. I’ve become increasingly interested in what I call “upstream impact,” which is not just fixing problems after they show up, but strengthening the conditions that prevent them in the first place. If we want a Nigeria where more businesses thrive, more young people access opportunities, and more communities prosper, we cannot focus only on markets. We also have to pay attention to the institutions, policies, and civic culture that shape those markets.

Because in the long run, sustainable development is not built by entrepreneurs alone. It’s built when entrepreneurs, institutions, citizens, and policymakers all contribute to creating systems that work.

Not every young person building for social good will start their own organisation. For those doing it from inside institutions, corporates, or NGOs, what does it actually take to drive real change from inside a system?

I actually think we don’t talk enough about intrapreneurship. We’ve glamorised entrepreneurship so much that people think impact only happens when you start something, which isn’t true at all. I’ve spent time in government institutions, consulting firms, development organisations, and private sector environments. Some of the most effective people I’ve met across all of those spaces are not founders. They are people working inside systems who quietly move things forward. Impact is not reserved for people who start something. It’s also created by people who improve something.

Being an intrapreneur starts with seeing your role differently. Most people ask, “What is my job?” Intrapreneurs ask, “What problem am I here to solve?” That shift changes everything. Intrapreneurs don’t wait for permission to care about outcomes beyond their immediate tasks. They look at gaps, inefficiencies, and opportunities and try to improve them.

The second thing it takes is credibility. A lot of young professionals want influence before they have trust. But systems don’t change because you have great ideas. Systems change because people trust you enough to implement those ideas. Before you can challenge a process, improve a programme, or lead a new initiative, people need confidence that you can execute. One of the reasons I was able to contribute meaningfully in different institutional settings was because I learned to deliver consistently. When people trust your work, they become more willing to trust your judgment.

Another lesson is that change inside systems requires patience. Founders can wake up tomorrow and change strategy, but institutions don’t work that way. There are approvals, stakeholders, competing priorities, budgets, politics, and legacy processes. Many talented people become frustrated because they underestimate how long institutional change takes. A lot of people give up because they expect speed that the system was never designed to give. The best intrapreneurs learn how to balance urgency with patience. They know when to push, when to wait, and when to bring others in.

That brings me to something else: coalition building.

Inside organisations, the best idea doesn’t always win– the idea with the most support usually does. You have to learn how to bring people along, communicate across departments, and create shared ownership of outcomes. If you’re the only person excited about your solution, it’s probably not ready yet.

And perhaps most importantly, intrapreneurs understand the difference between visibility and impact. Some of the most significant changes I’ve been part of were initiatives where the spotlight didn’t matter. What mattered was whether more people gained access to opportunities, whether a process improved, whether resources reached the people who needed them, or whether an institution became more effective. At the end of the day, both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs matter. One builds new systems and the other strengthens existing ones. And we need both if anything is going to change at scale.

So if you’re a young professional sitting inside a corporate organisation, a government agency, a donor-funded project, or an NGO, don’t assume you’re on the sidelines of change. You may already be sitting exactly where some of the most important decisions are being made. The question is not whether you have founder status. The question is whether you’re willing to take ownership, build trust, solve problems, and consistently push the system to work better than you found it. That’s what real intrapreneurship looks like.

We are grateful to Yemisi Ajeojo for her time and candour in this conversation.

If you are a young woman of African descent navigating your career and finances, Yemisi’s LightUp Woman is a live event bringing together experienced women and corporate leaders for panel conversations and open dialogue. Find out more here.