In knowledgeable panorama the place company communications are more and more anticipated to do greater than form perceptions, Motolani Babalola is carving out an area for herself by connecting the ability of storytelling with the accountability of social affect.
With seven years of expertise in model constructing and strategic communications, Motolani has constructed her profession round serving to organisations translate enterprise priorities into compelling narratives, credible platforms and measurable programmes.
For her, efficient model storytelling is greater than what an organisation says; it is about what it does, the folks it reaches and the worth it creates over time.
While holding sway because the Team Lead, Brand and Corporate Communications at Leadway she led a multidisciplinary crew, coordinated company companions and oversaw communications investments. In that place, she stood on the intersection of company repute, stakeholder engagement and sustainability, requiring her to steadiness enterprise targets with initiatives that reply to actual neighborhood wants.
Yet past the technique periods, communications plans, and company narratives, a constant thread runs via her work: the idea that progress is not often achieved alone.
Collaboration and partnerships are the rules that underpin her strategy to model communications and social affect. These are philosophies mirrored within the initiatives she has helped develop, the communities she has supported and the partnerships she has cultivated throughout completely different sectors.
One of her most vital contributions at Leadway was the institution of Leadway Cares, the Group’s CSR and sustainability platform. Designed to help folks and the surroundings, the initiative focuses on well being, schooling, and social empowerment programmes, translating the organisation’s broader social accountability ambitions into tangible neighborhood programmes.
Under her management, the initiative has supported interventions that deal with sensible wants whereas contributing to longer-term growth. These interventions embody meals aid programmes via partnership with the Lagos Food Bank, environmental affect actions with the latest one at Alpha Beach neighborhood and tree-planting initiatives throughout Nigeria.
Among the milestones related along with her work is the group’s first group-wide social affect initiative, which noticed greater than 1,000 timber planted throughout Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire. Beyond its environmental significance, the initiative represents an effort to embed sustainability into the organisation’s actions throughout geographical borders.
Furthermore, she spearheaded the event of Leadway Group’s flagship 2025 Social Impact Report and its devoted social affect web site, care.leadway.com.
By creating platforms via which social affect might be communicated and tracked, she positioned social affect as an built-in a part of company technique relatively than an remoted philanthropic exercise.
For her, the worth of those initiatives is not nearly boosting firm picture however enhancing lives via significant contributions.
Similarly, her ardour for enhancing lives discovered expression via her work in Hersurred by Leadway, a neighborhood devoted to supporting and empowering girls. A neighborhood of greater than 2,500 girls.
She led the launch and flagship initiative in 2023 and, since then, has led the expansion of the initiative from 0 to 2500 neighborhood members, over 100 beneficiaries and oversaw plenty of partnerships to make sure the continual recognition, amplification and empowerment of each youthful and older girls in society.
Through the Pages to Places by Leadway, a literacy initiative that has offered books to greater than 10,000 youngsters in faculties throughout Nigeria. The undertaking aimed to advertise studying and enhance entry to instructional sources. Through editions, she has led collaboration with notable authors and founders like Lola Shoneyin and Bunmi Aboderin-Talabi to advance the trigger to advertise literacy and rising the studying tradition amongst Nigerian college students on the foundational stage.
Another notable undertaking is Arrive Alive, a nationwide street security marketing campaign undertaken in collaboration with the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC).
In this undertaking, she and her crew introduced the fact of street security to life, infusing creativity and storytelling. The marketing campaign was so profitable it gained the Outstanding Purpose-Driven Experiential of the Year award, recognising its work on the intersection of experience-led engagement and social goal.
Outside model and company communications, she makes use of her personal voice to attach with younger folks via her budding neighborhood, The Work in Progress (WIP) Clan, the place sheshares concepts and her opinions on development, profession, and success.
Motolani’s work speaks for itself within the variety and vary of her tasks; she has proven her dexterity of pondering and willingness to enhance lives one sustainable undertaking at a time.
In a world the place organisations are more and more judged not solely by what they obtain commercially but additionally by how they contribute to society, Motolani Babalola is constructing her skilled story round a transparent thought: that communication is strongest when it is backed by motion, partnerships are strongest when grounded in shared goal, and affect issues most when it creates lasting worth for folks, the surroundings and organisations too.
