Dr. Oluwatosin Oye. Akande is Founder and CEO of RED Universal Consulting where she provides strategic leadership and oversight. She is a political scientist, policy analyst, development economist, and sustainable energy expert with work experience that spans the U.S., U.K., and Nigerian governance and economic development sectors. This includes research experience and multiple consulting and project-work involvement with renowned organizations across local, state, federal government and multi-lateral institutional levels. Some of the institutions she has worked on consulting-assignments with include, UK Agency for International Development (UKAID/DFID), European Union (EU), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the World Bank (WB).
Dr. Oluwatosin started her international experience with the City of Baltimore Department of Housing & Community Development working in the Asset-Management office, where she was responsible for the disposition, management, as well as the statistical tracking of city-owned property. Deepening her experience in asset-management, she segued into the Water-Engineering sector while working for Thames Water in London, UK. There she managed the company's pipes, mains, and reservoir-assets, assessing the resultant-effects and the-firm’s key performance indicators (KPI's) of response times, reduced leakages, bursts, customer-flooding, and water-quality for City of London residents. After her exposure overseas, Dr. Oluwatosin decided to pursue her passion for development in her home-country Nigeria. She worked both in the Banking Supervision and Risk Management departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria. As a Risk Analyst, her work focused on macro-prudential regulation in addition to identifying and mitigating credit, market, operational, and concentration risks in Nigeria's monetary financial system.
To further buttress her economic development focus, she worked as the Monitoring & Evaluation Lead for World Bank/DFID private-sector development project (Growth, Employment, & Markets in States-GEMS 2), aimed at increasing construction-firm productivity, turnover, growth and incomes as well as employment for artisans, laborers, and women in the Construction & Real Estate Sector of four Nigerian States--Lagos, Abuja, Kano, & Kaduna. She also worked as a Market Analyst & Intervention Lead at UKAID Business Innovation Facility--BIF 2, which utilizes inclusive-business principles to rectify market-inefficiencies and constraints to expand opportunities for people at the base of the economic-pyramid (BoP) so that producers, consumers, workers, distributors, and supplier economic-agents can increase their incomes and livelihoods, while simultaneously spurring inclusive and even-growth.
Dr. Oluwatosin’s skill-sets and area of expertise include budget-development, public-policy analysis, and results-measurement (specifically research-design; qualitative / quantitative data-analysis; data collection/visualization/reporting; impact forecasting/projections; impact evaluation; and theoretical understanding and application of the Making Markets work for the Poor Approach (M4P) to private-sector development projects). She has also conducted various research in development-theory, policy, and interventions as it relates to global monetary-systems issues; agro-industrial linkages; pro-poor growth; surplus-labor absorption; rural and urban-industrialization.
In her most recent academic-undertaking of doctoral-study, Dr. Oluwatosin explored green-growth theory and its intersectionality with (as well as) application to poverty and industrialization. Her specialization in power-generation through fossil-fuels as well as renewables: solar photo-voltaic power and carbon-neutral-development analytically investigates how Nigeria can circumvent the ‘capital-intensiveness’ as well as its poor-electricity-grid-networks through solar-renewables to stimulate urban-and-rural-livelihood-micro-ventures; SME; and large-enterprise-growth in Nigeria’s manufacturing-sector.
Subsequently, Dr. Oluwatosin desires and is committed to engaging stakeholders who are passionate about broadening energy access through Renewable-Energy Initiatives, Deployment, and Ideations, including the Design of effective and optimal clean-energy-models and other power-generation electricity-solutions in Nigeria.
Academically, Dr. Oluwatosin, holds a B.A Honors dual-degrees in Political Science & Policy Studies from Syracuse University in New York, USA and a M.Sc. Honors degree in Development Studies from the London School of Economics in London, UK. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy Degree from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell in Global Studies with a concentration in Socio-Economic Development.
On the civic level, Dr. Oluwatosin sits on the board of the architectural-firm MASTERMiNDS-DESiGN and beverage-enterprise Waterboy where she provides advisory and strategic-counsel to both firms. She was the 2006 Miss Nigeria in America 1st Runner Up and is a Nigerian Leadership Initiative (NLI) Associate as well as a member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA).
Dr. Oluwatosin Akande