Unoma Okorafor

Unoma is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Working to Advance STEM Education for African Women (WAAW) Foundation, a 501(c) non profit dedicated to promoting Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Education for African women, and working to ensure that talent is engaged in Technology Innovation on the African continent. Dr. Okorafor is also the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Herbal Papaya, a health and wellness company, head quartered in Wylie, Texas, that manufactures and markets natural and organic Papaya based health supplements and drinks.

Dr. Okorafor received her undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Lagos. She obtained the M.Sc. degree from Rice University, Houston, TX, and her Ph.D. at Texas A & M University, College Station, TX both in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She is a graduate of INSEAD’s Social Entrepreneurship program and Stanford University Business School’s Executive Program in Social Entrepreneurship. She is currently pursuing her MBA degree.

Her industry experience includes team lead at the Education Technology Division at Texas Instruments, Dallas Texas. She has also 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 acts as a visiting professor at the African University of Science & Technology (AUST) Abuja Nigeria where she teaches Computer Science courses.

She has been guest speaker at several events including the 2010 Women In Science and Engineering Conference TAMU, served as thought leader for Ashoka Foundation Changemakers and was elected as a 2010 "Future World leader" by Crans Montana leaders' forum and received the 2013 Anita Borg Social Change Agent Award.

Dr Okorafor has authored several journal & conference papers