Contact Info
Unoma Ndili O. Ph.D.
Dr. Okorafor is the founder and Chief Executive of the WAAW Foundation. Born in Nigeria, she received her undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Lagos in 1998. She obtained her M.Sc. degree from Rice University in Houston, Texas, and her Ph.D. at Texas A & M University, College Station, Texas both in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She is a graduate of INSEAD’s Social Entrepreneurship program and attended Stanford Business School’s Executive Program in Social Entrepreneurship. Her industry experience includes Tech 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 been a speaker & thought leader at several events including SXSW, WISE Conference, Women’s Forum, and Ashoka Foundation Changemakers. She is a 2010 Crans Montana “Future World leader”. Unoma was a recipient of the 2013 Anita Borg Social Change Agent Award and was the 2016 winner of the GEM Tech Awards from ITU and UN Women.
She has authored several international journal & conference papers. Her industry experience includes software developer and team lead at the Education Technology Division at Texas Instruments, Dallas Texas. She has worked at Intel, HP, and IBM research lab.
Dr. Okorafor is a member of IEEE, ACM, SWE, NSBE, and SPIE and has been the 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 partner at Herbal Papaya LLC and Radicube Technologies – a big data analytics company. Dr. Okorafor acts as a visiting professor at the African University of Science and Technology (AUST), Abuja Nigeria where she regularly teaches courses in the Computer Science department.