Unoma Okorafor

Dr. Unoma Okorafor is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Working to Advance STEM Education for African Women (WAAW) Foundation, a 501(c) non profit dedicated to promoting Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Education for African women, and working to ensure that talent is engaged in Technology Innovation on the African continent. A serial & social entrepreneur, Dr. Okorafor is also Founder & CEO of Herbal Papaya, a health and wellness company that manufactures organic health beverages & supplements and Co-founder & Principal at Radicube Technologies Inc, a Big Data Analytics company.

Dr. Okorafor received her undergraduate degree from the University of Lagos. She obtained the M.Sc. degree from Rice University, Houston, TX, and her Ph.D. at Texas A & M University, College Station, TX all in Electrical & Computer Engineering. She is a graduate of INSEAD’s Social Entrepreneurship program and Stanford University Business School’s Executive Program in Social Entrepreneurship. She is currently pursuing her MBA.

Her industry experience includes team lead, Education Technology Division at Texas Instruments, Dallas Texas. She has worked at Intel, HP and IBM research labs. Dr. Okorafor is a member of IEEE, ACM, SWE and NSBE and was a recipient of the Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the AAUW Engineering Dissertation Fellowship and the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Fellowship for promoting STEM education. She is a visiting professor at the African University of Science & Technology (AUST) Abuja Nigeria where she teaches Computer Science courses.

She has served as guest speaker at several events including the Women In Science and Engineering Conference. She serves as thought leader for Ashoka Foundation Changemakers and was elected as a 2010 "Future World leader"​ by Crans Montana leaders' forum. She was a recipient of the 2013 Anita Borg Social Change Agent Award.