AWARDEES
INTERNATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT IN HEALTHCARE
Dr Oluyemi Badero
A top Nigerian cardiologist based in New York, has been named among the top interventional cardiologists in the United States. Castle Connolly, the organization which publishes a leading annual publication of distinguished US doctors listed Badero among the top US doctors based in New York and reported that he is one of the interventional cardiologists to reckon with in the US.
INTERNATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT IN AEROSPACE
Wendy Okolo
Wendy A. Okolo is a Nigerian-American aerospace research engineer in the Intelligent Systems Division at NASA Ames Research Center. She is the first Black woman to obtain a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from University of Texas at Arlington. During Wendy’s undergraduate years, she served as president of the Society of Women Engineers at the university. Okolo is a Sub-Project Manager in the Intelligent Systems Division of NASA Ames. She is also a research engineer in the Discovery and Systems Health Technology (DaSH).
INTERNATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC
Wizkid
Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun known professionally as Wizkid is a Nigerian singer and songwriter. The recipient of several international music award nominations and awards, he began recording music at the age of 11 and managed to release a collaborative album with the Glorious Five, a group he and a couple of his church friends formed. He rose to prominence after releasing “Holla at Your Boy”, the lead single from his debut studio album, Superstar (2011).
Wizkid became the first Afrobeats artist to appear in the 2018 Guinness World Records for his contribution to “One Dance”. In 2019, he was featured on Beyoncé’s project The Lion King: The Gift on the collaboration “Brown Skin Girl”, which won him a Grammy Award for Best Music Video. His fourth album, Made in Lagos, was released in October 2020, to wide commercial success and acclaim. The album includes the single “Essence”, which became the first Nigerian song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. By February 2021, Wizkid was the most-streamed Nigerian artist of all time on Spotify, with over 3.4 billion streams across all credits.
