5 women to watch in product management

Product management involves the artful blend of strategy, innovation, and execution, where the focus is on identifying and satisfying customer needs while simultaneously driving business growth and profitability.

Nigeria’s product management landscape presents a unique set of challenges. The dynamic nature of the market is often coupled with infrastructure deficiencies, regulatory obstacles, and limited access to resources.

The gender gap in product management is quite apparent, with women being underrepresented as revealed by a Kellogg Executive Education report. The report showed that disparity between men and women in this field is striking, with men holding approximately 65 percent of the positions, while women make up only 35 percent of the workforce.

Despite these challenges, it is interesting to know that some Nigerian women possess a unique blend of resilience, adaptability, and creativity, enabling them to navigate obstacles and drive innovation across diverse industries.

This report casts a spotlight on some of the most prominent female influencers and thought leaders in Product Management in Nigeria.

Oluwatobi Otokiti

Oluwatobi Otokiti is the visionary Founder of ProductDive, a world-class leading EduTech and consulting company for product management professionals and product-led technology companies. She is also the convener of Africa’s foremost product leadership conference, The DIVE, a conference for product management professionals

With over a decade of work experience in building financial and EduTech services technology products, Otokiti has a track record of delivering innovative technology products for Africa, the US, Europe, and emerging markets.

Otokiti  has contributed to the success of three unicorn companies—Flutterwave, Andela, and Interswitch driving the development of tech products, – which has positioned her as a strong product leader. Her dedication to building great products and her contributions to the tech industry in Africa make her one of the Women to Watch in Product Management

Temi Giwa

Temi Giwa is a high-impact Product Manager with over 15 years of experience in various tech fields, including development, digital marketing, consulting, and product management. From strategy to execution, she has a track record of developing and executing product strategies in high-risk, low-information markets.

In her four years as product lead at Paystack, Giwa has been responsible for driving product success for Nigeria across multiple levers, including Merchant Tools (Web and Mobile), Internal Operations, and Quick Delights. Before Paystack, Giwa had worked at Wakanow and KPMG Nigeria, where she honed her expertise and gained a wealth of experience in product management.

Tobi Dele-Safa

Tobi Dele-Safa is currently the Technical Product Manager at KUDA. She is a product manager with over four years of experience in the software industry. She has also worked with various clients and partners across different industries, especially finance, technology, and healthcare.

She enjoys building and working on products to solve problems in several facets of human endeavor, especially in novel spaces.

Tobi has consistently demonstrated her skills as a PM by prioritizing effectively, bringing a thoughtful and engaging process to each business problem, and applying frameworks such as the MoSCoW method and T-Shirt Framework to select and develop features.

Adeyinka Adesanya

Adeyinka Adesanya is an innovative product management professional with expertise in solution delivery using Agile and Waterfall methodologies. She is skilled in user experience and business process optimisation. While working with iTap Solutions Ltd, she noticed that some customers were struggling with understanding how to effectively utilize the iTap Deluxe application, she proposed the development of a comprehensive standard operating procedure (SOP) for the application. This idea helped to create a solution that would walk users through the various functionalities of the Deluxe application, making it more accessible and user-friendly.

According to her, this experience underscored the value of listening to user feedback and proactively addressing their queries. “It also highlighted the importance of clear communication and thorough documentation in improving product usability and customer satisfaction,” she added.

Adesanya is passionate about inspiring and helping young talents in Nigeria, the UK where she is currently based, and elsewhere looking to get into the product management space to gain knowledge, collaborate, and network with one another through her various media engagements. She has been featured on media platforms like The Nigerian Observer, Leadership Newspaper, BusinessDay Newspaper and much more.

Tolu Alabi

Tolu Alabi is passionate about the way technology simplifies and elevates lives. she is currently building Cleva, a banking platform for non-US residents to get paid in USD and manage their finances. A former FX Algorithmic Quant in Goldman Sacks, her product career journey started after an Internship at WhatsApp while coursing an MBA at Stanford. At Amazon, she was a Senior Technical Product Manager for Amazon Logistics and later for AR Shopping.