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Kike Oniwinde Agoro is the award-winning Founder and CEO of the BYP Network, a multi-million-pound company focused on advancing the careers of black professionals around the world.
Kike founded BYP Network in her bedroom when she was 24 years old. Since then, over 150,000 users and over 35,000 of their members have been up-skilled through mentorship, thought-leadership events, and industry work placements.
She was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 after being one of only a handful of black female founders ever to have raised over $1m, and the United States Government recently chose her as a prestigious Young Transatlantic Innovation Leader.
Kike is also the Vice-Chair of the London Chamber of Commerce Black Business Association, is on the board of Getting on Board, a charity dedicated to diversifying charity boards, and is an alumnus of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers. She is passionate about reshaping and recharging the workplace, with diversity being her main priority.
At just the age of 16, Kike dealt with the trauma of losing her brother to the prison system and having her and her family’s world turned upside down. Instead of giving up on life, she decided to dig deep and stay focused on walking toward her purpose and reaching her potential.
One month after her brother went to prison, Kike received her GCSE results of eight A*s, and she went on to gain three straight As in her A levels from a school that had a 30% A – C pass rate.
The idea for the BYP Network came from her experiences growing up in East London with her mother and two brothers. Also, noting a lack of diversity on her undergraduate course and in the workplace, Kike felt like the ‘black narrative’ needed changing. Instead of all the negative news on gangs and the view that black people are only athletes and musicians, Kike knew that the key to changing the narrative was to bring all the black professionals around the world together for role model visibility and new opportunities.
In 2020, Kike led a successful crowdfunding campaign with over 1200 investors and raised over $1m, becoming one of just thirty-five female founders to have raised over $1million.
In 2018 Kike was included in the Financial Times and Inclusive Board’s first list of Top 100 UK BAME Leaders in Tech. The following year, she was included in Forbes 30 Under 30, a list of young European technology leaders, and was one of the 2019 Maserati 100.
Kike was named one of the top five black students in the country by Rare Recruitment and gained a fully funded track and field scholarship to the University of Florida to study a MSc in Management and compete in the women’s Javelin. Kike was named a Sky Woman in Technology Scholar, F-Factor winner and New Entrepreneurs Foundation winner. She won a STEM Trailblazer Batons Award at the Houses of Parliament and over 20 entrepreneurship awards.
Kike has also been a judge for many awards, including the Great British Entrepreneurs Award, the Barclays Diversity and Inclusion Awards and the Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize.
As well as achieving greatness in the business world, Kike has been a keen athlete from a young age, becoming a champion javelin thrower. She first represented Great Britain at the European Junior Championships in Tallinn in 2011. Kike was a three-time bronze medallist at the British University Championship games while at the University of Nottingham, including medalling at the London Olympic stadium.