Arese Ugwu is a financial literacy advocate and the author and producer of the Smart Money Woman series. Arese also known as the Smart Money Arese is also a podcast host and is focused on creating media products that teach women how to create wealth. She has a background in wealth management and is quite gifted in storytelling and has decided to channel it into creating media products about wealth, investment, entrepreneurship and employment.
Arese Ugwu
Born: 19th March, 1986
Age: 35
Place of birth: Benin, Edo state, Nigeria
Education: Aston Business School, Birmingham
University College of London (UCL)
Lagos Business School
INSEAD Abu Dhabi
The London Business School
Occupation: Author, Producer, Financial Literacy advocate, Finance expert, Podcast Host, blogger
Organization: Smart Money Africa
Partnership Securities Ltd
House of Tara International Ltd
The Higher Education Foundation
Women In Management, Business and Public Service
Spouse: (ex-husband) Michael Ugwu
Children: Zikora Ugwu
Early life
Arese Ugwu was born into the family of Mr. Victor Ogiemwonyi and Mrs. Funke Ogiemwonyi on the 19th of March, 1986 in the city of Benin, Edo state, Nigeria. The first of three children, she is passionate about changing the narrative of African women being financially dependent and vulnerable to their husbands and/or fathers.
Personal Life
The financial expert, Arese Ugwu, was once married to the 41 years old investor and entrepreneur of mixed race, Michael Ugwu but the marriage crashed after Arese found out about Michael’s sex escapades while she was abroad birthing their baby girl, Zikora. Arese Ugwu enjoys travelling and infact launched a Pan African book tour for her books The Smart Money Woman and The Smart Money Tribe. She enjoys spending time with her daughter and sharing secrets to wealth generation.
Education
Upon completing her primary and secondary school education, Arese flew to Birmingham to continue her education and bagged her first degree in Business and Management from Aston Business School in 2006. She proceeded immediately to do get her MBA and bagged the degree in Development Economics in 2007. She has equally taken programs at the Lagos Business School, London Business School and INSEAD business school, Abu Dhabi.
Career Life
The Smart Money Arese worked in the financial industry for over eight years before founding the Smart Money Africa in 2014. It was her desire to help Africans become financially literate and also to help change the African poverty narrative. Her education, work and contemporary life knowledge helped her while she wrote her two best selling books. She used her gift of story telling to teach financial literacy and liberation to African in an easy and relatable way. She launched a book tour for these books and eventually created a travel aspect of the Smart Money Africa which is, Smart Money Travel. She is an independent director for Africa’s largest indigenous Makeup brand, House of Tara and is an advisory board member for RW magazine. She is also the Head of wealth management and a non-executive director for Partnership securities Ltd. She is an associate member of the WIMBIZ.
Arese has worked with some of Africa’s biggest brands such as Standard Chartered bank, Bamboo, Unilever, First Bank, etc.
Awards and Achievements
• 2021- recognized as one of the Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD)
• 2017- Listed in YNaija’s ‘The New Establishment’
• 2016- for the Future Awards Africa Prize for Education
• 2016- Rémy Martin’s Pacesetter Award
• 2015- Access Bank’s Awards for Young Professional of the Year
Net Worth
The finpreneur says her network is her net worth and she sure has a lot of people in her circle.
Social media Handles
Instagram– @smartmoneyarese
LinkedIn– https://www.linkedin.com/in/arese-ugwu-272710a7
