Meet Chinwe Onyeagoro

Chinwe is a top management consultant and advisor to Fortune 1000 executives and the U.S. Small Business Administration. She noticed that qualified businesses in inner cities were being shut out of credit markets due to information inefficiencies, and founded FUNDWELL to connect under-served business owners with lenders locally and nationwide as well as improve their financial health. 

Q+A

What scares you?  

The passage of time. And the realization that no matter what metric scale you use there really is no such thing as ‘the Present’. There is only the Past and the Future.

Who do you admire? 

People who have figured out a way to balance their compulsion 'to DO’ with the delicate and simple stillness required 'to BE’. I haven’t met many people like that yet. Though, I’m still hoping I will. In the meantime, just knowing that such people exist is cause for admiration.

What is your favorite song? 

“Just Do You” – India Arie

She has reinvented that expression. Rather than being an inward looking, hyper hedonistic expression of individualism, it is a powerful call to action to all those who want to make the world a better place. I absolutely love it! India really outdid herself with that one.

If you had to change careers, what would you want to do? 

 If I could only live twice, I would come back next time as a cross between “Aaron Sorkin and Malcolm Gladwell” and create a new literary genre “Small Business Thriller.”

What those writers have each done for the political drama and human interest niches, respectively, is nothing short of amazing. I’d love to give people a peak into the inner worlds of entrepreneurs and small business owners. And I would simply delight in revealing to audiences how strange, beautiful, messy, passionate, purposeful, challenging, rewarding, timeless, and transcendent the story of entrepreneurship really is.

Favorite Quote? 

“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?…Humanity will not be cast down. We are swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.” – Winston Churchill

Want more? Of course you do! Learn all about inefficient markets from Chinwe’s TEDxWindyCity talk and connect with her on twitter:@FundwellChinwe and @TheFundWell.