Women in Resilience Spotlight: Fola Akinfe
Fola Akinfe is a senior business resilience leader with extensive experience spanning two decades in business continuity, operational resilience, disaster recovery and crisis management in the financial services sector across theUS, Europe, Middle East and Asia. She has worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies delivering strategic resilience programs globally.
In her spare time, Fola volunteers as a professional mentor, a mum to her two sons, an author and currently studying for a PhD in entrepreneurship management.
What brought you into the industry?
I started my career in 1994 in the technology space spending most of my time on a server or computer behind a desk. As the years went by, I was hungry for a deeper knowledge of the organisations I worked for; what risks they faced, their operational threats, challenges and how they overcame them to keep the revenue coming in. In the year 2000, I was incredibly lucky to come across a secondment opportunity with the business continuity team at Barings Bank backfilling for a long-term absence. It was an exciting breath of fresh air! I had a whole new perspective of the business, talking to stakeholders, contributing to their state of preparedness and getting that broader understanding I had craved for. I knew this was the only career for me and 20 years on, I have not looked back since.
How did you reach your current position? What challenges did you face?
Through confidence, passion, hard work, commitment, determination and not allowing myself to be limited by societal prejudice. I was keen to build my own personal brand and become a versatile industry leader. Though most of my career has been in financial services, I worked very hard to broaden my understanding of other industries and what resilience means for them. In addition, I have been privileged to have very good mentors throughout my career and worked with a bunch of fantastic people who I learnt a great deal from.
Challenges? – lots of them! Whilst resilience is now fast becoming a hot topic with an increased focus in most organisations, it has not always been that way. It has been a struggle in parts of my career to get business owners to dedicate the time required to ensure an operationally resilient business. Committing to long hours, being able to influence leadership and taking ownership of my own success are a few ways I overcame those challenges. You must learn to develop a voice and be confident in the value you bring to any organisation. Own it!
Which specific skills do you think are needed to become a leader in your field?
You need to be passionate about what you do to the point where other people can feed off it. Confidence is also very key as is courage. The courage to speak up even when others don’t quite buy into it. Like most professions, having a sense of empathy and emotional intelligence particularly around clients and leaders operating under pressure goes a long way. It is also vital in our industry to be innovative and forward thinking so you can continuously assess emerging threats and help organisations to be better prepared for a crisis or business interruption.
I have learnt over the years that being dedicated to supporting and enabling the success of the teams that work under you, contributes significantly to your overall success as a leader.
Do you think that the BCI WiR initiative will influence our industry? If yes, how?
Most definitely! Over the years, I noticed the higher I went in my career, the less women were represented at board level. However, in recent times, I have been delighted to see a massive shift change in this space. WiR provides a platform for the growing number of women in the industry to share a diverse range of ideas and challenges as well as supporting each other. This platform will also encourage the less experienced professionals to grow through mentoring and to build a future generation of resilience leaders.
What changes would you like to see in the profession?
I would like to see resilience professionals develop a broader understanding of the whole resilience spectrum. Over my career, I have met and worked with some incredible professionals, but they tend to be knowledgeable in one area whether business continuity, crisis management, risk management or disaster recovery. As a resilience professional, it is key to have enough of an understanding to speak to all the disciplines that contribute to being operationally resilient. It takes time as we all started in one area but as the risk landscape and threats to organisations become more complex, our appetite to stay ahead of them through knowledge and experience needs to increase.
In your opinion, why should more people be joining the resilience community?
To meet other professionals at various points of their career which provides a platform to share knowledge, learn and grow. It is also a great way to network and get an increased level of visibility amongst industry peers.