Zuriel Oduwole '22

Zuriel Oduwole and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon

In acknowledgement of her many development projects, peace and gender initiatives across the globe over the last 10 years, Zuriel Oduwole '22 was presented with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon exceptional leadership award on Sept. 9, in New York, by Secretary Ban Ki-Moon himself.

Having graduated from UCLA at 19 years of age with a bachelor of science degree in cognitive science, Oduwole is now in a graduate school program focusing on global risk & international affairs, but she continues to be a quiet and powerful inspiration to millions of girls, women, political and business leaders around the world, speaking, sharing, and also advising when invited to.

She has been at home on the global stage for most of her life. In 2013, at the age of 10, she was profiled in Forbes Magazine and by 2015, she was listed among 33 women who had changed the world in by ELLE Magazine. Calling her the world’s most powerful girl in January 2017, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry honored her in Washington, D.C., at the State Department for her tireless work advocating against child marriages and speaking for girls’ education. Oduwole has met one-on-one with over 30 World Leaders to address Global Social Development and Education Challenges that children and teenagers face.

Zuriel Oduwole inspires her audience in Guyana

Her most recent mission fulfilled a commitment. Seven years after lending her voice to a series of initiatives aimed at fostering peace between Venezuela and Guyana over the disputed Essequibo Oil territory, and her historic peace meeting first with President David Granger at the UN, Oduwole has kept her promise: she is in Guyana to meet the biggest beneficiaries of the peace initiative — the women and girls of Guyana.

Oduwole was formally welcomed by First Lady Arya Ali to talk about her initiatives for the development of children and girls in her country, a constituency that would have been adversely affected by any military conflict between Venezuela and Guyana. The UN has stated that women, young women and girls are always the most vulnerable and adversely affected, during civil unrests and armed conflicts anywhere in the world.

Oduwole's trip to Guyana was the latest in a series of global peace mediation and initiatives in which she was been involved.

Zuriel Oduwole meets with President Abdel Fattah El Sisi in Egypt

Meeting with President Abdel Fattah El Sisi of Egypt, Oduwole was a subtle but powerful voice in the processes that brought about Middle East peace during the four-year Arab blockade of Qatar that ended peacefully in 2021, a year before the FIFA World Cup.

Understanding that Mozambique was labeled by UNICEF as having one of the highest rates of child marriages in the world, Oduwole met with President Felipe Nyusi in Maputo, showing herself as an example of the power and benefits of educating girls worldwide. A year later, Mozambique formally outlawed girl marriage.