Zuriel Oduwole
Born in Los Angeles, Zuriel founded her Dream Up, Speak Up, Stand Up project in March 2013 to inspire young children globally to dream big, and reach higher. Along the way, she has spoken to more than 24,700 youths in 11 countries (the U.S., the U.K., Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Mauritius, Ghana, Malawi, Namibia, Kenya and Ethiopia) on education and its economic empowerment in just 2 years, the most by anyone under the age 40 in recent years.
She has met with and personally spoken to in interview format 19 President and Prime Ministers, including the leaders of Nigeria, Jamaica, Tanzania, Liberia, Malawi, South Sudan, St Vincent & Grenadines, Cape Verde, Kenya, Mauritius, Malawi, Lesotho, and St Kitts & Nevis, in the Caribbean region.
A budding documentary filmmaker, she is on record as the youngest commercial film maker in the world, writing, producing, editing and scoring her own films. The most recent of these films was released on the big screen in November 2014, and has showed in 5 countries on 3 continents: The U.K., Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, and Japan. Her newest film in post-production was shot across 5 countries on 3 continents - Brazil, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Mauritius and the U.S.
ELLE Magazine named her in its prestigious list of "33 Women Who Changed The World" in 2015, a list that included other luminaries such as Federal Reserve Bank Chairwoman Janet Yellen, the President of General Motors Mary Barra, and one of the most prolific producers of our time - ABC Producer Shonda Rhimes, creator of the hit TV shows Greys Anatomy and How To Get Away with Murder.
At age 10 in 2013, she became the youngest person in the world to be featured in the global and iconic business and wealth Forbes Magazine's 97 year history. This was for her work in bringing the issues of Girls Education on the African continent to the forefront of the global debate of change, in line with the UN 2015 Millennium Development Goals.
As of May 2017, she is 14, in the 11th grade [two years ahead of her age peers], and an English and Mandarin speaker. Zuriel hopes to be a leader in the field of Robotics engineering, but in the future, the President of the United States of America or the Secretary General of the United Nations.