By Folake Soetan

VENTURES AFRICA – On a recent trip to Nigeria, Claudine Moore, award-winning CEO of C.Moore Media, an international Public Relations agency, sat down with Ventures Woman to share a bit about her life and work. Claudine’s extraordinary background and aptitude for seizing opportunities have propelled her to the top of her field, having been hosted by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown at his home which has housed famous political figures like Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Claudine was invited to the Prime Minister’s house after being named among the top 100 most influential Britons on the 2010 Black Power List, an award she considers special since it was given over a decade after moving to the United States. According to Claudine, “to be recognised for something by your home even after being away for so long… that was really special”. With her non-traditional yet deeply personal connections to Africa, hers is an interesting story.

Hi Claudine! Thank you for being here today. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you are doing in Nigeria?

Thank you very much for inviting me to be interviewed! I was born and raised in United Kingdom but my parents are from the Caribbean (Barbados and Jamaica). So even though the Nigerian Press has said I am American, I’m not (laughing). I moved to the US about 12 years ago, in 1999. So I’ve got the whole Caribbean, US, UK, African thing going on which in my mind means I’ve got the best of all worlds. I was educated in the UK, my first University was South Bank University where I studied Social Sciences and after that I wanted to study Psychotherapy. I was always very good with people and a good communicator so I thought that meant I needed be a therapist so I went to Regents College where I did a postgraduate diploma in Psychotherapy. I then went to Durham University for a Masters in Psychotherapy and Counselling and after that I worked for a little bit in London before deciding that that was a good time to move to the US. Interestingly I didn’t have a job in the US and I wasn’t moving to go to school so it was quite daunting. I didn’t have any infrastructure around me in terms of job or a network of people but what I did have was my grandparents who had moved there from Barbados many years ago and I stayed with them for the first 6 months. And after about 6 months of being there I got my very first job which was working with McCann Erickson, a global advertising agency....

What part of your life connects you with Africa?

In terms of my connection with Africa, I’ve always identified strongly with Africa because my parents always taught us that it does not matter whether you’re West Indian, British or Caribbean, if you’re black you’re African full stop, no questions. (We like that!) So I’ve always identified strongly with the continent and I’ve always desired to work and extend the expertise and knowledge that I had towards its development. But I had to wait for the right time when the expertise and services I had to offer would be beneficial. So as I launched C.Moore Media and gathered experience working with different brands and received recognition from different awards in the US and UK, I thought now’s the time. So last year I was invited by the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations to be their keynote speaker and after the speech several organisations approached me about working with them. Our first client has been Arik Air and we do their international PR for them.

Fantastic! So what inspired you to start your own company?

I haven’t got one definitive reason as to why. However moving to America, everyone is so entrepreneurial, especially in New York, everyone has their job and something else they were doing. I found that people used to come to me for PR Advice all the time and whenever I left a position, brands from an organisation would come to me directly and say we’d like to work with you. So what started off as me being a consultant expanded into a company and that grew. We are still growing it, we’re still small though we have a strong reach spanning the US, UK and West Africa. But we’re still a small company and that’s one of the benefits of working with us because when you work with big global firms, they bring in the big talent and expertise to pitch the proposal and get the business but those who execute it are much more junior staff. It’s one thing to get the VP or SVP to bring the strategy together but if you’ve got a junior assistant doing all the execution, it’s not going to work....


Did you have any mentors along the way?

Yes! Certainly I had my father who always encouraged us to push forward and never let anyone tell you you can’t. In fact, he emphasised it so much that ‘can’t’ is not even a word in my vocabulary. So I strongly believe that anything you put your mind to, you can do. An old boss of mine at McCann Erickson is still today a trusted mentor and friend even though I left the company so many years ago. The truth is we’ve all had helping hands along the way and I believe mentoring is something that everyone who has succeeded has to do, reach back and help others who are coming along. In fact, I haven’t ever told anyone this before, so Ventures Africa is getting this first, what I want to start doing on my visits to Nigeria is to go to local high schools and speak to young girls about using education to help develop and elevate themselves and families. I’ve already done this a few times in the UK and would love to start that here. I tell young people, I failed my A-levels the first time and it was so hard getting my results because everyone kept asking what I was doing next year. While my friends were all going off to university and I had to be humble and say I was repeating the exams. The second time around I did the courses I actually wanted not the ones I felt I should do and I did much better. So failure is not a bad thing, we just need to learn how to use it. And when my friends hear what I’m doing now, they are not surprised because I’ve always had the dream of working in Africa.

You’ve been fantastic Claudine! Any final words of advice for entrepreneurs on the rise?

Always enjoy what you do and if you genuinely enjoy it you will be good at it. Have faith and believe in yourself. Surround yourself with people who are more successful than you, smarter than you and better than you. That way you will keep on learning. When there’s a challenge, feel the fear and do it anyway.


Read full interview here http://www.ventures-africa.com/2012/06/%E2%80%98feel-the-fear-and-do-it-anyway%E2%80%99-interview-with-claudine-moore-ceo-c-moore-media/