From the viral #HerMoneyHerPower campaign to her global feminist culture lab, The She Tank, Blessing Omakwu is proving that real change doesn’t just happen in policy rooms, it happens in the stories we tell and the systems we dare to reimagine.
A strategist and storyteller with over a decade of experience spanning the United Nations, the ONE Campaign, and the Gates Foundation where she served as Deputy Director of Global Content and Campaigns, Blessing Omakwu has helped shape some of the most influential gender equality narratives of our time.
As founder of The She Tank, a feminist culture lab shaping women’s power and gender futures, Blessing is blending strategy, theology, and creativity to shift the world’s understanding of feminism from “empowerment” to power. Her work has galvanized movements, from the billion-view #HerMoneyHerPower campaign to pioneering faith-rooted initiatives now housed at Georgetown University. A believer in storytelling as a tool for systems change, Omakwu’s career bridges boardrooms and stages alike, executive producing global events like Goalkeepers at Lincoln Center, writing essays on faith and womanhood, and developing frameworks that reimagine gender equality through both cultural and spiritual lenses.
Now splitting her time between New York, Johannesburg, and Abuja, she is focused on the next frontier: reshaping how men, women, and faith communities imagine power together.
Glamour: You call The She Tank a “feminist culture lab.” What moment made you realise that changing culture could be even more powerful than changing policy?
Blessing: I started out as a lawyer, researching human and women’s rights at The George Washington University Law School, including South Africa’s Constitutional Court, one of the most progressive in the world. From there, I worked across policy, advocacy, and philanthropy with the UN, the ONE Campaign, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, and later, the Gates Foundation. But women’s rights and gender equality were always my passion. Over time, I realised laws and policies mean little if mindsets and norms don’t shift. Most people (myself included) won’t open a policy brief after work but they’ll scroll social media, stream a TV show, or listen to a podcast. That’s when it clicked: social change and culture go hand in hand. The She Tank was born from that belief that real change happens when we meet people where they are.
Glamour: You went from global development to building viral culture-shifting campaigns. What was your “enough is enough” moment that made you trade diplomacy for creativity?
Blessing: The truth is, I’m an accidental founder. I left my last role at the Gates Foundation where I served as Deputy Director for Global Content and Campaigns and Head of Goalkeepers, the Foundation’s flagship campaign on the Sustainable Development Goals because I was burned out. Between the personal and the professional, I’d hit a wall.I walked away from everything; my job, marriage, and New York City to start over. I document that journey in The Pivot Diaries, my substack newsletter about reinvention. Last year, I pitched a campaign idea to a funder, intending to advise on it. Instead, they asked me to lead it. That moment became the seed for The She Tank.
The She Tank allows me to bring together everything I love; strategy, theology, campaigns, the arts, producing and storytelling in service of what I care about most: reimagining women’s power and gender futures. I call it a feminist culture lab because we’re constantly experimenting with ways to hack and shift culture from our frameworks, like Gender Equality Theology, to our campaigns and creative productions.
Glamour: #HerMoneyHerPower was bold, backed by research, yet culturally relevant. What’s one lesson that campaign taught you about how to make feminism go viral?
Blessing: #HerMoneyHerPower worked because its message was both bold and clear. We weren’t talking about women’s empowerment, we were talking about women’s power. The difference can be summed up with questions like: Once a woman earns money, can she decide how it’s spent? When she gets a job, can she thrive or will discrimination and unpaid care work hold her back? That gap became our focus. We defined women’s economic power through three pillars: Access, Voice, and Choice. Access means having resources and opportunities. Voice means being heard and valued in decisions from the bedroom to the boardroom. Choice means real agency over how women earn, spend, and shape their futures. Economic power means having all three. People deeply resonated with that clarity.
We also paid attention to the cultural moment; movements like #tradwives and even #softlife are subtly promoting women’s financial dependence. We pushed back, using creative storytelling and influencer partnerships to reframe financial independence as aspirational. The results were incredible, over one billion views, 350 million unique users reached, and measurable mindset shifts captured through polling. The big lesson: when feminism speaks the language of culture, it goes viral. I actually just launched a short series on The She Tank’s LinkedIn called How to Build a Viral Social Impact Campaign to share some of those insights.
Glamour: You’ve just settled in Johannesburg. How is this city shaping the way you think, create, and lead?
Blessing: I always say Joburg chose me. I came here for what was supposed to be a four-week vacation, and in so many ways, the city asked me to stay. My relationship with Johannesburg actually began years earlier, during my time at the Gates Foundation. As Head of Goalkeepers,
I made South Africa a priority country and helped build a local community of change-makers.
One of my first hiring decisions at the Foundation was also to move a role that was meant to be in Seattle to Johannesburg. Joburg has been calling me back ever since. What I love most about Joburg is its rhythm; the creativity, the artistry, the deep connection to ancestry. There’s a certain joy in this city, not “joy as resistance”, joy as the starting point. Johannesburg is teaching me to create, lead, and live from that place of joy.
Blessing: You’re executive producing a podcast on masculinity in 2025 - a hot button issue.
Why is a podcast on men important for feminism, and what do you hope men (and women) take away from it? The longer I’ve done gender equality work, the clearer it’s become: you can’t dismantle patriarchy without confronting the pain it causes both sexes. Around the world, men and boys are falling behind on several measures, like education, and the old scripts of masculinity such as “the man is the provider” no longer work.
These shifts are fuelling confusion, the breakdown of relationships, and the rise of incel culture.
In a world where figures like Andrew Tate are dominating narratives, including across the African continent, I wanted to be a part of creating an alternative. Nigeria felt like the right place to begin. It’s home to the largest population of Black men in the world, and how Nigerian men negotiate identity, power, and partnership shapes not only a national story but the global image of Black masculinity.
MENtality with Ebuka; a pilot-season collaboration with one of the continent’s most iconic media figures, Ebuka Obi-Uchendu brings together an all-male guest line-up to explore what it means to be a man today. I think women will find it fascinating too.I hope people of all genders watch the show and walk away with a bit more understanding of our shared humanity.
Glamour: You often write about God, gender, and justice. How do you stay grounded in faith while pushing for women’s power?
Blessing: Faith has always been personal for me; my parents were pastors, so I grew up in the church. I was eight years old when I first asked God why He seemed to hate women. I had read Scriptures and heard sermons that silenced or limited women, and even then, something in me knew that couldn’t be the full story of God’s heart. That question became the seed of a lifelong journey. Over the years, I’ve studied the work of feminist and womanist theologians who helped me see Scripture in its full richness, not as a text that diminishes women, but one that, when read in context, reveals God’s vision of equality, dignity, and freedom for all people.
That journey led to The She Tank’s Gender Equality Theology framework, our effort to make this scholarship accessible to everyday people. The framework explores how faith can actually affirm the full equality of women and girls, and we’ll be releasing a playbook soon to equip others to do the same. For me, staying grounded in faith while advocating for women’s power isn’t a balancing act, it’s one and the same. My feminism is my faith in action.
Glamour: When you’re dreaming up a The She Tank project, what makes you say, “Yes, this will move culture”?
Blessing: Honestly? The vibes. I’m led by intuition. Period.
Glamour: What daily ritual or mindset keeps you centred when you’re leading a global team and living between continents?
Blessing: My mornings are sacred. Before I start responding to emails or WhatsApps, I meditate, write in my gratitude journal, listen to the Bible, pray, and say my affirmations. I have team members in China, London, Canada, and Nigeria, so that quiet time with myself before engaging everyone else is essential. When I skip it, it shows. And movement is non-negotiable.I work out often, and there’s a Monday dance class here in Johannesburg that I never miss when I’m in town. I don’t move that slot, not even for a funder or a partner. Having one hour a week where I can play has become part of my secret sauce.
Glamour: If The She Tank could spark one big cultural shift across Africa in the next 18 months, what would it be?
Blessing: If The She Tank could spark one big cultural shift across the continent, it would be reimagining gender relations in our intimate lives. It’s easy to say we believe in gender equality when we’re talking about macro issues like girls’ education or women in leadership. But our micro interactions tell the real story. I want us to start having honest conversations about what equality looks like in our personal lives; letting go of scripts like male headship or the idea that women are automatically responsible for household work. I hope we can provoke conversations that go beyond outdated gender norms, and focus on our specific realities and shared humanity. That’s where true change begins.
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