Oluwafisayo Motunrayo Okare, “Fisayo”, is a multimedia journalist with over six years of experience, and currently a full time Newsletter Writer at Documented, an immigration-focused publication in New York.

She recently graduated from Columbia University’s journalism school (M.Sc. 2021).

Past:

In 2020, Fisayo was hired as a financial journalist at Stears Business in Lagos, Nigeria, to help launch a premium subscription news product on the digital publication which is now renowned for its reporting and data-driven analysis of the Nigerian economy.

In 2019, she served in Abuja for Nigeria’s mandatory national youth service year and worked in the media department of Yiaga Africa, a civil society organization focused on democracy and good governance. While there, she produced and edited magazines and newsletters for the organization.

She is also a published author. Fisayo co-authored Yiaga Africa’s “Beating The Odds”—the first book on the life, political experience, and campaign strategies of the initial beneficiaries of the historic Not Too Young To Run law. It was published and distributed in 2021 with support from the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. In it, she uncovered stories about legislators, below 30 years old, who overcame threats to win Nigeria’s elections in 2019. She interviewed and wrote about the campaign journeys of five State Houses of Assembly representatives, including the youngest State House of Assembly Speaker in Nigeria. Fisayo has also written stories of female aspirants that were oppressed while running for elections, and volunteered with WatchingTheVote as an elections Data Entry Clerk in 2019.

In 2018, she graduated with first class honours, Bsc. Mass Communication, from Pan-Atlantic University—home to Lagos Business School.

While pursuing her bachelor’s degree, she began writing and publishing her work. She later pursued an editorial internship in 2017 with The Native, Lagos, Nigeria, where she grew into a journalist and sub-editor.

Fisayo has won awards including a Scholarship Award from the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the United States (AFPC-USA) in 2020, and 1st Runner-Up in a Global Case Study Competition on Inclusive Business Models and Financial Inclusion organized by Lagos Business School in 2016. In 2014, she was one of three students in her high school to win the ‘Principal’s Award’ — her high school’s highest honor for students. Her’s was ‘for compassion.’