This spotlight features Jokotola Edu-Phillips. Jokotola is a Nigerian stationery designer and founder of Joko Edu, a vegan leather company that creates notebooks for personal and professional use.
Jokotola primarily views herself as a storyteller with a passion for African history, and by marrying those two passions, she hopes to encourage her clients to preserve African culture by telling their stories on the page.
Can you share a brief bio?
I am the Founder and Creative Director of Joko Edu; we tell African stories. I love writing, talking and looking for ways to teach people about our rich cultural African heritage. I am married to an accountant, and we have a one-year-old son whom I love to call our activity king since he seems to be everywhere at once.
What time does your alarm go off?
My body alarm usually goes off at 6:30 am, but when I need to wake up earlier, I set my alarm for whatever time I need to get up.
What do your mornings typically look like?
My mornings are usually packed with meetings. However, I find I have the best brain power at this time, so I try to minimise my sessions in the mornings and focus on deep work. As a result, I can get a lot of writing done and other tasks on my to-do list.
How did you get on this career path?
If you had told me ten years ago that I would have been on this path, I wouldn’t have believed you. I started my career in banking in the U.S., although this was not my first choice. As I graduated in 2010, a couple of years after the 2008 recession, there weren’t as many opportunities available, especially for an international student like me.
When I returned to Nigeria, I majorly worked in retail, specifically fashion. However, this space did not excite me as much, and I fell more in love with Nigerian history and writing. One thing that intrigued me during my undergraduate studies in the U.S. was all the different ways I learnt about the country in class. I took courses like Religion in America, U.S. Government & Politics, America Since the Civil War, Media in the U.S. and more. This made me wonder what it would be like to learn about Nigeria similarly.
Although I did not initially know what direction my love for Nigeria’s history and culture would take me, I found a way to marry it with another passion, stationery. I wanted to showcase Nigeria and Africa the same way I had learnt in college, from different points of view. And what better way to tell African stories than through everyday products that people use, like notebooks? So we plan to expand our product offering to include more range in the future.
Apart from creating our in-house designs, we partner with clients to tell their stories about their companies, weddings, birthdays, conferences and more through our Joko Edu notebooks.
Tell us what a typical day looks like?
I have regular meetings with my team to discuss our tasks and goals. We started this recently, which has been beneficial for us. One of the main hats I wear is that of sales. I am constantly looking for new clients as well as connecting and interacting with our existing ones.
Can you share some of your most memorable moments?
As I have an eponymous brand, Joko Edu, I meet people who knew my paternal grandmother, whom I was named after. I regularly meet people who knew her before she passed in 1977 and often regale me with stories of who she was.
These stories remind me of why Joko Edu exists. Forming these strong and positive connections reminds me that it is important to remember my rich history and understand that I have a great name to uphold.
I believe if we had stronger ties to our roots and understood the importance of connections, our value system wouldn’t have deteriorated to this level.
Our largest resource on the African continent is our human capital, and what better way to transform this continent by investing heavily in that resource? No problem can be solved without humans at play! None! So if we want to solve the 101 issues we have, we need to start from the source by investing in our people. We must create a culture of research, innovation, exploration and more. We must encourage people to think outside the box and even applaud it.
What do you love most about what you do?
I love meeting and connecting with clients, learning their stories and how they got to where they are at that point. Forming strong bonds is very important to me as I believe it allows us to better understand the client and the goals they plan to achieve. It is also a great avenue to make friends and build one’s network. I am usually part of the initial meetings with clients, and I have learnt a lot from them over the years. Through these relationships, I usually always realise that we are somehow connected. Maybe my client knows an aunt or my mother, which gives me a deeper appreciation for all our connections.
What do you not like about what you do?
Anything administrative! Whew. I am always surprised when I meet people that enjoy administrative work, but I guess that’s why God created us with different strengths. However, as I oversee a business, I cannot run away from this function altogether, but thankfully, I have a great team that offers fantastic support in this area.
What do you do after work?
I relax. So you’d usually catch me hanging out with my husband and son or watching Netflix. As I set some goals this year, I am doing more reading in the evenings and taking an online course, although I am not as consistent with those as I’d like. I miss going out, so that is something I plan to do more of in the coming months.
And what do you do at the weekends?
The same as above! See why I need a social life? Since COVID, I have not gotten back to going out as I used to, and the last few months have shown me how much I have missed that. Plus, my closest friends left the country, leaving a huge gap for me. So I am working on rebuilding a local tribe so I can plan hangouts and fun activities to get away from home. Clearly, my house sees me a little too much.
Who in the creative industry (globally) inspires you and why?
I am inspired by my maternal grandmother; she creates the most beautiful items with her hands, from her meals to her needlework. My grandmother is now 91 and has not stopped creating.
I grew up with these beautiful tray covers in my home, which were all made by my grandmother. I’ve worn winter hats made by her strong hands to keep my head warm. But what I admire most about her is her strong, persistent spirit. She never stopped designing or creating or making. As a woman born in 1931, at a time when there were even more barriers simply because of her gender, she has fought to overcome several of them and still holds her head high.
What does the societal change mean to you?
Education. Education is critical to developing society. This is not limited to formal education. No! We must work hard to build our children’s natural curiosity and pioneering spirit instead of killing them in the name of discipline. Of course, there is room for discipline, but that does not include forcing people to think a certain way.
Our largest resource on the African continent is our human capital, and what better way to transform this continent by investing heavily in that resource? No problem can be solved without humans at play! None! So if we want to solve the 101 issues we have, we need to start from the source by investing in our people. We must create a culture of research, innovation, exploration and more. We must encourage people to think outside the box and even applaud it.
One big problem is our under-funded, under-staffed public schools. I volunteered at a public school for years teaching SS2 students Government, and it was unfair how these students had been relegated to the back burner. Within each child is the potential to transform our society, but every single child needs to be nurtured and encouraged to hone their skills.
In your opinion, how can the creative industries contribute to social change/social cohesion/improve the Nigerian society?
I firmly believe we are all creative with our unique natural gifts and talents. However, I find we limit creativity to specific industries. For example, the doctor who has to think creatively about how to perform her surgery or the finance director who has to devise solutions to bail his company out creatively are all using their creative spirit to render solutions.
So for me, creativity is not limited to a sector. We need to develop that creative spirit in every industry and encourage our people to think of solutions that can be beneficial in that market or at that time.
We can nurture our creativity by devising ways for people to spend more time working with their natural gifts and abilities and encouraging them to keep pushing the bar.
If you were not doing what you are doing now, what career path would you be on?
Maybe I’d be working in Human Resources as I enjoyed this course in college. Or, better still, I might have chosen to work in Marketing and Communications.
