Skip to main content

Meet the Boss: Addis Alemayehou, managing partner, 251 Communications, Ethiopia

‘Meet the Boss’ is a How we made it in Africa interview series where we pose 10 questions to business leaders across the continent.
Addis Alemayehou
Addis Alemayehou
Addis Alemayehou, managing partner, 251 Communications, Ethiopia
1. What was your first job?
Room service in a hotel.
2. What parts of your job keep you awake at night?
Working capital.
3. Who has had the biggest impact on your career?
My sister. Because she has always achieved every goal that she set for herself.
4. The best professional advice you’ve ever received?
Just go for it – life is too short.
5. The top reasons why you have been successful in business?
Being very attentive to clients, and respecting the consumer.
6. What’s the best place to prepare for leadership? Business school or on the job?
On the job.
7. How do you relax?
My children.
8. By what time in the morning do you like to be at your desk?
7am
9. Your favourite job interview question?
Where do you see yourself in five years?
10. What is your message to Africa’s aspiring business leaders and entrepreneurs?
It is our time.
Addis Alemayehou is managing partner of Ethiopian-based advertising agency 251 Communications. He also sits on the boards of the African Leadership Network and the Ethiopian American Business Forum.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Which of these business Africans inspires you most and why?

                           Aliko Dangote                                                         Michael Adenuga                                  Isabel Dos Santos                                                       Tony Elumelu                               Nicky Oppenheimer                                                  Siza  Mzimela Folorunsho...
4 comments
Read more

How This South African entrepreneur turned his business from failure to box-office hits

Triggerfish Animation Studios is a South African film and entertainment animation company which produced the award-winning feature films  Adventures in Zambezia  and  Khumba . It has also recently created the animation for Roald Dahl’s  Revolting Rhymes  TV series, which premiered on BBC at the end of last year. Triggerfish is now working on its next film,  Seal Team , which is set off the coast of Cape Town. This animation follows the story of a seal and a team of misfits who decide to fight back against the sharks who dominate the waters.   But the company’s journey to success has been far from easy and Stuart Forrest, the man behind the business, has seen Triggerfish through many challenging times – including liquidation. At yesterday’s launch of the 2017 Sanlam and Business Partners Entrepreneur of the Year award in Cape Town, he shared this experience with an audience. Starting from the bottom Forrest is not the original owner of Trig...
Post a Comment
Read more

Building a profitable green economy in Africa

Viewed from a dramatic granite formation jutting above the town, the central Ugandan settlement of Soroti doesn’t amount to much. A series of low-rise rectangular buildings, drifting off into a featureless hinterland, it appears a regional administrative and commercial centre of little importance. Yet in December, European Union and Ugandan diplomats, wielding commemorative spears and greeted by brightly attired locals, gathered to cut the ribbon on a development that could put this backwater firmly on the map. Soroti’s vast solar plant is the largest of its kind in  East Africa , a sprawling site of over 32,000 photovoltaic panels that will add an initial 10MW of electricity generating capacity to the local area. Backed by development funds from European taxpayers and foreign private capital, the $19m project aims to power up to 40,000 homes, schools and hospitals, while kick-starting regional economic growth and delivering profits to its commercial backers. It is on...
Post a Comment
Read more