Ebele Okobi is the Public Policy Director, Africa at Facebook, where she leads on engaging with government, civil society, and other policy influencers and shaping Facebook’s policy agenda across sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to Facebook, Ms. Okobi was the founding global head and senior legal director for Human Rights at Yahoo, where she led Yahoo’s efforts to address the legal and policy issues related to privacy, free expression, and access. Ms Okobi previously worked as a corporate lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York, Paris and London, a consumer rights policy fellow at the Consumers Union in San Francisco, a senior director of Advisory Services at Catalyst (an NGO with the mission of advancing women in business) in San Jose and Amsterdam and in the Management Development Programme at Nike’s EMEA headquarters in Amsterdam, where she created marketing, corporate responsibility and business development strategy for sub-Saharan Africa, for NikeWomen and Nike Digital. In 2001, she took a year-long sabbatical to volunteer for human rights organizations in the US and Senegal, including MADRE, the Children’s Defense Fund, and ANAFA. Ms. Okobi was a founding member of the Global Network Initiative Board from 2008 to 2014, is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the advisory board of Junior Achievement Africa. Ms. Okobi earned a BA in Psychology from the University of Southern California, a JD from Columbia Law School and an MBA Certificat des Études from HEC-Paris.
Ebele Okobi is the Public Policy Director, Africa at Facebook, where she leads on engaging with government, civil society, and other policy influencers and shaping Facebook’s policy agenda across sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to Facebook, Ms. Okobi was the founding global head and senior legal director for Human Rights at Yahoo, where she led Yahoo’s efforts to address the legal and policy issues related to privacy, free expression, and access. Ms Okobi previously worked as a corporate lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York, Paris and London, a consumer rights policy fellow at the Consumers Union in San Francisco, a senior director of Advisory Services at Catalyst (an NGO with the mission of advancing women in business) in San Jose and Amsterdam and in the Management Development Programme at Nike’s EMEA headquarters in Amsterdam, where she created marketing, corporate responsibility and business development strategy for sub-Saharan Africa, for NikeWomen and Nike Digital. In 2001, she took a year-long sabbatical to volunteer for human rights organizations in the US and Senegal, including MADRE, the Children’s Defense Fund, and ANAFA. Ms. Okobi was a founding member of the Global Network Initiative Board from 2008 to 2014, is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the advisory board of Junior Achievement Africa. Ms. Okobi earned a BA in Psychology from the University of Southern California, a JD from Columbia Law School and an MBA Certificat des Études from HEC-Paris.