‘Black Stories Do Matter, And Foreign Stories Do Matter’

Mo Abudu is on the Forbes list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women and a 2022 honoree on the Forbes 50 Over 50: EMEA list. She earned spots on both lists due to the media production company she founded, EbonyLife Media, and its success in producing stories for about people on the African continent.

Abudu wasn’t always an entrepreneur: She had worked her way up the corporate ladder in the oil and gas sector until she eventually had a job heading up human resources for ExxonMobil. But one day, when Abudu was in her mid-40s, she says she woke up and realized she was ready to do more than work a 9-to-5. She dipped her toes into entrepreneurship by starting a human resources consulting firm but soon thereafter jumped into the world of media entertainment, first as a talk show host and then, in 2012, as the founder of EbonyLife.

Today, EbonyLife’s founding story and diversification strategy is a Harvard Business School case study and the company itself is Netflix’s biggest partner in Africa.

Abudu recently sat down with ForbesWomen editor Maggie McGrath to reflect on the early days of EbonyLife— “Oh my god, the Hollywood experience is lovely,” she says. “You collect the business cards and send the emails and nothing happens”—and how her strategy of continuing to knock on the doors of the industry’s biggest co-producers and distributors began to pay off.

“It’s about being at the right place at the right time and being able to tell the right story at the right time, when the world is ready to listen,” she says.

Abudu also gave Forbes exclusive details on her new media partnership with award-winning actor Idris Elba and how she hopes it will help her fulfill her mission of putting more African stories on global platforms. You can watch the full conversation here: