Alim Abubakre

Biographical Information
"Alim, the Founding Executive Director of These Young Minds, has a proven track record in entrepreneurship, industry led research, international project management, consulting, stakeholder management, sustainability and executive education. He has worked either directly or indirectly with the University of Cambridge, Oxford, London School of Economics, Aston Business School, Jaguar Land Rover, Manchester United, Bentley, Deloitte, Ernst and Young, Manchester Business School, Microsoft (among others) on various projects. About five years ago with a team of different multinationals, he conceived and organised the first student-led international conference on the global financial crises in the UK titled, "Managing in turbulent times", which generated fresh pragmatic management solutions and gained international media coverage due to its sheer success.

"Alim has a unique stakeholder management background, which was demonstrated by the fact that he was amongst one of the youngest cohorts of his MBA class in 2008 yet nominated as the MBA President amidst directors and more experienced professionals. In addition to this, he was selected out of 400 course representatives during his MBA study, as the University’s best course representative for the year 2008/2009. This was, and still is, an immense honour as he was the first MBA representative and African to be awarded course representative of the year.

"Furthermore, his project management skills have flourished through his involvement in managing World Bank Projects in Nigeria and working as a member of the project management team in Nigeria that implemented the largest public private partnership project (as at 2007) amounting to 3 billion pounds in Africa (World Bank Purchasing Power Parity).

"Until recently, Alim was a member of the board of Cambridge to Africa and Director of Strategy for a consulting firm in Cambridge which advises academic institutions including some Russell Group Universities on conceiving and implementing successful internationalisation strategies.

"Alim has taken part in different executive trainings, from capacity development delivered by University of Cambridge, Manchester Business School to that accredited by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM), cross-disciplinary management training organised by the University of Leicester, in conjunction with senior executives from multinationals such as Accenture, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Sainsbury’s, Enterprise-rent-a-car among others.

"What is more, Alim was selected out of a plethora of entrepreneurs to take part in the award winning Enterpriser programme facilitated by the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning Judge Business School, Cambridge University and the Sloan School of Management MIT USA in 2010. In the same year, he was selected as one of the top 100 Virgin Media emerging entrepreneurs in the UK. Alim has spoken on topical Management issues at Oxford University, University of Cambridge, and University of Leicester and at the NUS International conference in Nottingham. He was a Judge at the University Of Leicester Festival Of Postgraduate Research in 2010. In 2012, Alim won a fellowship to take part in the University Of Cambridge Programme Of Sustainability Leadership which had Directors of many FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 organisations as participants. In April 2013, Alim was invited to deliver a master-class at the ICONS 2013 which was held in conjunction with Coventry University, ICONS is the largest African Postgraduate Student gathering in Europe."