Chi Chi Wonuigwe
I’ve known ChiChi for many years now, first as a colleague and then as a friend. If you cross paths and chat, you will not forget your conversation with her easily. As a child she wanted to be someone who would make impact, who would dress up for work – perhaps a lawyer (a management law class that showed how innocent folks land up being convicted and perpetrators walking free put an end to that aspiration. She then wanted to be a journalist, and laughs as she tells me that her mother’s first question was: do you want to eat? She ended up in the science track, and wanted to become an engineer like her father, but physics wasn’t for her.
Her career started in public health as a Community Health Coordinator & Educator – she enjoys learning and sharing with others. Niche, mission-driven work and its growth is what keeps her motivated. She tells me she ended up at CPS randomly through a friend’s referral – her career background until then did not show a linear path to her current trajectory but the work used the skills she had acquired - particularly research, training and development. I asked her to share more about this, because I think this will resonate with many of you. She tells me that she started as a Health Educator by day with Americorps to an Admitting Admin at night. From there she worked as an Administrator with a home health care agency to a Discharge Planner with a large hospital before transitioning to serve as a Manager of HR & Corporate Affairs with a oil & gas company. As a Lead Certification Application Counselor, she worked to educate and enrol others in the Affordable Care Act before landing at CPS where she started as a Field Supervisor and subsequently became a Field Manager, and now Director
Even now, she enjoys being challenged by and growing at the work she does, and jokes that she is grateful for having a job she can occasionally complain about. She is proud of how she has been able to mentor the superpower that each of her team members has. Watching people blossom into who they can be and improving processes continuously keep her going professionally. She gets the same from those who lead her, and feels not just valued but also supported.
Her father has been one of the greatest influences in her life. Professionally, she credits Kim Jones (who is the fantastic Executive Director of Transportation at CPS) – she jokes that Kim landed up being an inadvertent mentor for her. They have spent 11 years together at work, and when in doubt, ChiChi asks herself - what would Kim do?
One piece of advice she has for others is to seek the lesson from wherever you are. You will never have all the answers, and you may think you are not supposed to be wherever you are, but if you try, you can probably make meaning from it. How you show up is much more important than how you start.
She is entrepreneurial and loves organising a good event (which she has been doing since she was 12 years old). Personally she enjoys spending time with friends and family. While she hates cooking, she will do it when she hosts. Home for her is a safe space that she extends to others.
I ask her to think about the ChiChi of the future. She visualises herself traversing the challenges and success of being a member of C-Suite and an entrepreneur, who is establishing her family and continues to have healthy, meaningful relationships with her loved ones. She also dreams of being a travel curator – which would mean owning her own event space, and creating niche curated trips to different parts of the African continent - to learn more about her current work visit www.eventsbychi.com.