Olufemi Sallyanne Decker, A Journey into Academia

Dr Olufemi Sallyanne Decker is not your stereotypical British academic. For starters she is a woman, secondly, she has no roots in Middle England, and thirdly she is African (Sierra Leonean to be specific). A woman dedicated to simplifying concepts for young people, and a passion for sharing and receiving knowledge, Yaaya caught up with Dr Olufemi Sallyanne Decker - Principal Lecturer in Banking and Finance, and Programme Leader for the MSc in International Banking and Finance at Greenwich University.

In Part 1 of our 2-part interview, we discuss her journey into academia and her love for learning.

And so the conversation begins …

Yaaya:

Dr Decker so lovely to meet you! What influenced you to agree to be interviewed by Yaaya?

Olufemi S D:

I agreed to be interviewed by Yaaya because I thought it was an interesting concept to have a group of young driven women decide to highlight success stories in the black community, because they want to influence and inspire others.

Yaaya:

Can you tell us what or who inspired you to become a Lecturer?

Olufemi S D:

I think I became a Lecturer by accident. I always wanted to be very well educated. My Mum’s best friend was a professor at the University of Sierra Leone. She is now late, and she was my earliest role model. I wanted to be exactly like her. I don’t think I’ve quite achieved that, as I haven’t filled her boots, but I’m on my way there. I was inspired by the fact that she was very well educated, very loving, and a warm individual at the same time. She cared about people a lot.

Yaaya:

You speak about these traits of this Professor as being an early influence in your life, did she teach in the area of banking and finance?

Olufemi S D:

No. She was actually a professor of Geography. She was one of the very few female African professors in Africa. She was also the warden of female students at the University,so she had a pastoral role as well as being an academic.

Yaaya:

What kind of relationship did you have with her?

Olufemi S D:

Well she was my Mum’s best friend, and she visited our house regularly. She was just someone who I felt I could be open with, who understood what it was like to be a young girl growing up in a very male dominated world that Africa is, so I think I kind of related to her on that level.

Yaaya:

Being a Sierra Leonean national, I’m assuming that your journey to becoming an academic may have been more difficult than your British counterparts due to employment restrictions etc? Is that a fair assumption?

Olufemi S D:

Well I think being a Sierra Leonean national actually changed my game plan, because when I finished my PhD in 1997, I really had no intention of becoming an academic, but there was a war in Sierra Leone at that time and it was virtually impossible to go home. There were no flights going to Sierra Leone at that time, and after being unemployed for a year because I needed a work permit, I decided to apply to become a Lecturer. I was able to get a work permit, so it definitely made a difference being a Sierra Leonean national.
Once I started working as an academic, it's dawned on me that over the years my biggest passion in life has been a love for learning, and that’s what has kept me in academia because I love to learn and having learnt things, I want to simplify them and communicate them to others. I think it came from being a show off as a child, and wanting to show off everything I knew. I think this is what I do best as a Lecturer which is: communicating what I have learnt in an innovative and interesting way so other people can enjoy the joy of knowing these things.

Yaaya:

You have had an interesting career and life journey to date. Share with Yaaya some of your highlights and curve points.

Olufemi S D:

The first curve that I can remember in my life was deciding what to study for my first degree. I remember having a conversation with my parents because I was one of those people who was relatively competent at most subjects, so I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to go to the science field, or commerce field, or study Geography or Languages. So we had discussion and I decided to study accounting for my first degree. So that was the first thing that started to define what I wanted to do.
After university I worked for a Bank, which changed my direction a bit. When I decided to study again, I actually did an MBA because I wanted to move into a managerial position in banking. After completing that, I then moved into the research field by completing a PhD in Banking. I think that I decided then that my passion was Banking and from that I moved into lecturing. So I think it has all been related to finance and commerce in some way, but I've moved from industry to academia.

Yaaya:

You’ve spoken about your career journey. Did you find it quite natural to progress through these different fields, or was it you just searching for where you best fit?

Olufemi S D:

I’ve always been driven by the fact that whatever I’m doing, I’m learning something new. I always remember by Dad saying to me when I was a young child that “no knowledge is wasted.” You never know when you are going to use the things you’ve learnt so that is the common theme. Be it research, be it practice oriented or a completely different field, I always feel as if I’m learning something and that I will be able to use at a later date.

Yaaya:

You’ve spoken of curvatures in your journey through life and career . What have been some of the highlights?

Olufemi S D:

What has been a highlight in my career to date? Obviously being able to get a PhD, which is a huge achievement. But I think for me after I did my first degree in Sierra Leone, I came to the University of Birmingham to do an MBA. Being able to succeed and do quite well in that MBA was something that I cherished, as I was able to move from one country to another and do quite well. It wasn’t easy but it gave me a boost.

Yaaya:

How have these experiences shaped you as an individual?

Olufemi S D:

I think one of the things which most people do is to underestimate themselves, and I’m probably one of those people who does this. They (career highlights) shaped me in the sense that they are concrete examples I can always refer back to reassure myself that if I commit to certain things I can achieve difficult things.

Look out for Part 2 of our 2-part conversation on Thursday 16th May 2013, where Dr Olufemi Sallyanne Decker discusses gender and race in Academia, what being an academic is like, and where she sees herself going next in her career.