Nigeria’s leading CSD brand 7Up, has announced Ms Oreoluwa Agunbiade as the recipient of the 7Up Harvard Business School (HBS) MBA Scholarship for 2023/2024 session.
Ms. Agunbiade becomes the 13th winner of the scholarship which was instituted in 2010. The fully-funded MBA scholarship at the prestigious Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States, is awarded each year by Seven-Up Bottling Company to aNigerian resident in Nigeria who must have been admitted to HBS for an MBA programme but unable to fund it.
The scholarship award goes through a thorough and rigorous competitive process until a winner is selected based on the set criteria by the management of Seven-Up Bottling Company. Ms Agunbiade, a lawyer turned management consultant was unveiled at an inspiring ceremony at SBC’s head office in Ijora, Lagos.
Mr. Norden Thurston, SBC’s Chief Marketing Director explained that the 7Up Harvard Business School Scholarship was launched in 2010 by the Chairman of SBC, Mr Faysal El-Khalil in commemorating the 50thanniversary of the business based on his passion to raise and Inspire a generation of young Nigerian leaders by leveraging quality global education that breeds and equips them with the right mindset.
According to Mr. Thurston, the 7Up HBS Scholarship has already created a pool of young business leaders in the political economy of Nigeria who are driving innovation and change in diverse sectors for a better society. He further highlighted that a key part of this initiative’s next step would be establishing an Alumni community that will have all past recipients who are doing amazing things and adding value to society such as: Olujimi Williams (2012), Mayowa Kuyoro(2013), Oluwasola Olaniyan(2014), Bankole Makanjuola(2015), ChidozieIbekwe(2016), Ahmed Alimi(2017), OlunmaIzejiobi(2018), Uzoma Anyanwa(2019), Abdul-Rahman Buhari (2020), DesayoAjisegiri(2021) and Dafi Rogers-Halliday(2022)all come together to see how they can further inspire the next generation of young leaders and see opportunities to give back collectively.
Commenting on the 7UP HBS scholarship, the Managing Director of SBC Mr. Ziad Maalouf said: “As an organization that strives for excellence, diversity and inclusion, we are pleased to welcome Ms Oreoluwa Agunbiade to the 7UP Harvard Business School family. I have no doubt that you will follow the tradition of hard work and excellence that has been the hallmark of previous recipients of this prestigious scholarship in one the world’s iconic business schools. We were swayed in awarding you this scholarship by what you are already doing to impact your environment and our hope is that you are able to return and impact Nigeria by insight and learnings gained”.
Apart from the 7Up HBS scholarship, Mr. Maalouf highlighted a few people-centered initiatives of Seven-Up Bottling Company aimed at empowering and inspiring Nigerians. Some of these include the Pepsi Football Academy which has continued to produce young talented footballers, provision of social amenities such as boreholes to host communities, provision of books and laboratory equipment to secondary schools, award of scholarships to indigent students to post-primary and tertiary institutions and support for cancer and cholera awareness programmes.
Speaking on the 7Up HBS scholarship award, Ms Agunbiade thanked Seven-Up Bottling Company for the opportunity to actualize a lifelong ambition of studying at Harvard. She pledged to use the education and training received to further the cause of women empowerment by setting up an impact fund to assist female-owned businesses in Africa to thrive.
As a business, Seven-Up Bottling Company will continue to guarantee a greener future for our beloved Naija by inspiring and enabling young Nigerian leaders with global leadership training from Harvard Business School who will eventually come back to inspire other leaders thereby creating a wave of sustainable change across all sectors of the Nigerian society.
