RichardNamme
  about me
  
   

My name is Richard. This section of my page on the web was set up to share experiences with friends, family and young business students seeking a career mentor.

I spent the better part of my teenage year's in Lagos, Nigeria before traveling out to pursue graduate studies in the United Kingdom (UK).

While in the UK, I attended the University of Essex in Colchester, where I graduated with a postgraduate diploma in Development Economics. Following a brief work engagement in the UK with the Ford Motor Company, I decided to return to Grad School to pursue further studies in the United States.

I attended Northern Illinois University, where I graduated in 2000 with a masters of science degree in Management Information Systems, with emphasis in Economics, which I did in a double MS degree program.

I currently work as a senior analyst consultant in the Telecommunications (Telecom)field. I have also worked in Wireless, Banking and Insurance, Publishing and Academia for mostly top US 200.

I consider myself to be an Information Technology/business solutions consultant with a strong passion for entrepreneurship. My interests are in integrating businesses in global market places with new opportunities in "emerging world" markets.

I would also like to get involved in a mentoring program to assists individuals and small businesses deal with the stages of getting a business idea past the conception stage into a fully functional and thriving enterprise, of course after I have accomplished this goal for myself. Thank you for visiting my page and please feel free to visit other sections on this page and share feedback.

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FAMILY

In West Africa and particularly Nigeria, part of being successful for the typical middle class family, is typically measured by the ability to provide comfortably for one's family. This included acquiring landed property and being able to build a comfortable home for every family member to live in. These days, most children raised from middle class homes, have set slightly higher expectations for themselves. To not only provide the best education possible for their own children, but to leave a legacy or inheritance for each family member, their community and to support causes which transcend generations after them.

I was born at a time when my parents were at their peak of their professional careers, so they named me ILOME (my traditional name), "Our child, born in our first home", which in our custom, signified that I came to them at a time when their typical worries were being a guardian (and somewhat "BIG Uncle/Aunty") to quite a few extended family relatives. In our custom, first generation educated Africans are expected to take on the major responsibility of encouraging and supporting multiple relatives through high school and in some cases through college. The idea was to help others develop their gifts and hence create new opportunities to be not only a blessing to others, but to positively impact their respective communities. This extended family set-up was quite characteristic of my childhood years. I grew up always having an older family member, in addition to my parents, to learn about life from. My mom and dad are thankfully both alive today and are retired from active service. My mom (Janet Namme), worked in education for over 35 years taking on many roles as a school teacher, principal and educational administrator. She is now retired and has been trying to institute a Non-Profit program to promote the study of English and Mathematics among high school students.

My dad (Chief Laban Omowale Namme) was in the media & publishing business for more than 45 years, and retired in 1991 as the Group Chairman, of the Daily Times Group of Companies. Dad, also served in various public service roles, including being a founding director of Nigeria's Central Bank in 1959. They are looking forward to celebrating their 50th Anniversary next year.

By now, you may have already guessed that I must be the "baby in the family". Well you're right! I am the last of three sons from my parents. My elder brothers, Albert and my late brother Viv, who sadly passed away in January 2008.
Mom and Dad at AVMC Church

FRIENDS
Most of my friends are scattered all over the world, since I have travelled and lived in quite a few different world cities. However, I still keep in touch with a few who are presently in the US and in Nigeria. These close friends attended King's College Lagos, where we all graduated from in 1988.

11 years after, we planned a class reunion, in July of 1999 at the Mariott Hotels, World Trade Center, Downtown New York.(Before the Sept. 11th disaster). KCOB's 88 Reunion 1999 Report. It was a 'smashing' success and I was proud that my efforts to get members of my graduating class at King's College together, yielded fruit. In the year 2000, some of my friends took over the initiative to host the Boston 2000 Reunion (July 7-9)as well as the set of 88 reunion meeting in Lagos (August 27th,2000). This tradition has continued annually with a lot of the younger Alumni's now taking the responsibility to organize similar events, except that quite a number of my class mates are now married with families of their own.

Most are already fairly successful in their respective careers. Our graduating set from King's College is unique for producing 24 who went on to become medical doctors, (2 who specialized in areas of surgery and work in the US) and 3 others with advanced doctoral degrees. In January 2001, I took on an initiative to set up an online mentoring program for Alumni grads from our my old school to act as mentors to others considering pursuing similar careers. My goal was to have at least 150 Alumni's from various sets sign up by January 2005, and yes! that goal was met and exceeded. In the year 2005, a close friend of mine, and member of was elected the worldwide group secretary to the larger body of King's College alumni's and we are now working closely together to coordinate and centralize the network of older and more established alumni's with our much younger group.

Other friends are from NIU, where I last studied and worked on campus as an active and influential student leader. They come from all over the world, unfortunately, I haven't kept close contact with them as I would love to, but plan on keeping up with this network in coming years.
 
hobbies

I love to travel and to learn about the diverse world we live in.

From what I see, most people get so caught up in an endless "rat-race" cycle where you simply live to work and pay bills. Very few people seem to be driven enough to take full advantage of their "gifts or talents." In some cases, this is caused by not having the right social and political support infrastructure in place. However, I have found in more recent years that you can live in a society like "America" where supposedly a lot more infrastructure is in place and still completely "miss the boat" if you do not have a clear structure of what to do to make things work for you. The right Knowledge is key. Having a mentor, the know-how to utilize credit and financial education is even more important. Furthermore, you can get distracted by the challenges of everyday living, so it is not too difficult to understand why people never accomplish their dreams during their lifetime. Most ideas have a time and season, and without preparation and the right team players in place, opportunities are simply never realized. So it becomes more and more appealing to just continue in the rat-race like everybody else till you are in your fifties before you realize that there is actually a slight chance that you may end up being worse off than the previous generation did.

Looking back at my life so far, I think being the youngest in my family or in the various institutions I attended as a student, has given me a "great eye and ear" to simply observe and learn from capable mentors in various areas of my life. I also quickly learned that behaving exactly the same way others did, can only get the same results others obtained. So I am learning to seek the knowledge of today and the wisdom of yesterday to conquer some new challenges in my life. So I am writing an interesting book on "harnessing the potential within you, to live an abundant life". The book attempts to present a practical insight on my experiences, as a teenager growing up, my life as a international student and vision of a social entrepreneurship.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to tell me that a top priority for me was to focus on getting out of the so called "rat race", quickly and to acquire skills to be an effective entrepreneur, because as far as I am concerned, you are limited by what your employer plans for you as an employee and subject to the limitations faced by the business environment you work for. So here's what I have done so far:
  1. Task 1: Take stock and assess where I was in life and to start a process of developing proven systems to replace my "earned income" with passive income streams.
  2. Task 2, Cut off all unnecessary baggage that was a drain on my resources. From my work experience, I knew this task involved not only cutting excesses on my finances, but also my time and the scope of things I embarked upon at each stage of my life.
  3. My current task is to start tackling my ideas in a systematic way, i.e Writing them down, developing simple processes to accomplish them. Analyze how they fit in with my vision of future, based on some of the issues/responsibilities I have today.


Wealth, starts with knowledge, and then the ability to apply it to realize your vision. Finally, the ability to transfer that knowledge effectively, so a system is established that adds new value at each next growth stage. Economists refer to this as "creating a multiplier effect. Basically, Each additional unit of work or resources added to a successful business venture MUST be able to multiply its profits in significantly greater units than each unit of work or resources added.

A favorite quote I like to share is from King Solomon -the wisest King that lived. He said "Of what use is money in the hand of a [self-confident] fool to buy skillful and godly Wisdom- when he has no understanding or heart for it?" (Proverbs 17:16)- AMP version. To paraphrase, of what use is money in the hands of a fool, if he/she has no desire to gain wisdom". It is not uncommon to see people fail to plan for the next generation or to protect their assets (or life's work) sufficiently, to leave behind a legacy for the next generation. Sadly, most times, being caught up in the endless rat-race cycle, leaves the hope for tomorrow (our children) with the mundane task of "reinventing a wheel that has already been built."

I end here, by saying that the most important part of my life so far, has been finding the peace and joy in my life, which for me has come from my search to know the mastermind and creator of all humanity. If you started on a Job tomorrow and had no Job Aids, manuals or mentors to work you through. You may spend quite a bit of your time, making costly mistakes and eventually get "fired" from the job. This is no difference with our lives. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all other things will be added to your life" Whoever God is to you is a different matter all together. For me, this journey led me to seek an intimate relationship with Jesus, "the Christ", and to accept him as Lord of my life and over all my problems. His grace and mercy has been more than sufficient in giving me hope and courage to enjoy every day. I must quickly add, that I, like many others has faced serious challenges in my life so far, but I am always grateful for each new experience, as it adds to making me a better person and reinforcing my beliefs that God is always in control. I am sure everyone story is different because the Creator made us all unique in our ways, but precious in His eyes. I hope at the end of my life, I would have discovered all my "gifts," applied all my talents and left the world with a better understanding of what it means to "live more abundantly".(John 10:10).
This is my life so far and my story. I hope that I have inspired you in my own little way to strive for the best out of your life. May you be blessed richly to touch the lives of others in your journey.




Please feel free to email me at any time.


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