Esther Fawole
Our crush is Damilola Solesi, the CEO of SMIDS Animation Studio company that creates entertainment content for television series, CG animated feature films, short films and also help brands tell compelling stories through animated campaigns.
Damilola Solesi had the passion for cartoon right from her childhood. It was this passion that initiated her to undergo the necessary training required to bring her dream to reality.
Damilola Solesi, graduated with a B.Sc in Computer Science from Bowen University, Nigeria. She also did a course on Business and Entrepreneurship from Clark Atlanta University.
In her bid to promote the emergence women’s interest in technology, she co-founded TechDivaz (now Women R.I.S.E), a platform where women are inspired to expand their interests in technology through collaboration, networking, training, mentorship, and funding to help them play a stronger role in growing the technology startup scene in Nigeria and Africa.
Although she face several challenges as a startup but she was able to overcome. She faced several challenges when she started, one of the first challenges was funding. She realised that starting an animation company is a capital-intensive business but we were able to mitigate this by finding creative ways to raise funds.
Another challenge she faced was finding skilled labour to fill her expanding team. Then, we decided to periodically organise an animation training programme known as the Smids apprenticeship programme, where she train and recruit trainees. For SMIDS to grow there is the need for a massive pool of talent, because animation is people-intensive, which is why we applaud the current administration’s drive to train several young people in animation skills.
Damilola Solesi advice other entrepreneurs that they should work towards those things which they have dreamt of, and they will eventually achieve it.
