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Zuriel Oduwole is described as “The World’s Most Powerful Girl.” Building on an already impressive résumé, this year the United Nations (UN) bestowed her Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon Award for ‘Exceptional Leadership.’ Ban-Ki-Moon was a former UN Secretary-General.
Zuriel is from the United States (US) and was born in Los Angeles to British parents, who are direct descendants from Mauritius and Nigeria. She is a diplomat, a documentarian, a UN Climate Champion, an influencer and the cofounder of a nonprofit fighting for equal access to education for girls and ending child marriages around the world.
Starting her public life at age nine (9) and described as a child humanitarian protégé, she has addressed global bodies including the UN, UNESCO and COP, spoken to more than 25,670 youths in 15 countries about the importance and power of education, and been featured on almost every global news platform, including the BBC, Bloomberg TV, CNBC, TRT World London, CCTV, CNN and the New York Times.
Zuriel speaks with leaders and institutions across the globe on the primary and secondary effects of Climate Change on education. The issue becomes a planning and content delivery point when meeting with leaders from coastal countries, such as the Prime Minister of Samoa, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, the Prime Minister of Vanuatu, the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, the Prime Minister of Fiji, and the President of the Marshall Islands.
This week at the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 77), in New York, she met several Heads of Government, including Grenada Prime Minister, Dickon Mitchell, and discussed matters of youth empowerment, focusing on the power of young people under 40 and the measurable global development and influence of this group, especially in climate education.
At age 9, Zuriel launched her international activism doing a documentary in Africa for a school competition. According to her, the documentary on the Ghana revolution was made because the topic was not only marked for a revolution in history, but she wanted to do something her peers won’t look at.
At age 10, she became the youngest person to be featured by Forbes’ Magazine in 2013, and youngest person in the world to show their self -written and self -produced film in commercial cinemas at the age of 12
At age 12 she became the youngest person to feature in ELLE Magazine’s bi-annual list of “33 Women Who Changed The World
At age 13 the UN invited Zuriel to speak to help negotiate peace between Guyana and Venezuela, at a time when conversations were escalating. On this experience she said, “Now if you ask the average person how a 13-year-old is mediating peace, they’d say that’s impossible, they are too young, but I was doing it.”
At age 14, Zuriel was honoured by former United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, for her global work on Education and Gender Development.
In 2019 she lobbied to end child marriages in Mozambique. She’s also worked with Arab leaders to engage younger citizens in Egypt.
She is listed in New York Business Insiders ‘100 Most Powerful People In The Word” at every age series when she was just age 11
She addressed over 30,000 people at the Place de la Concorde in Paris on Global Issues, more specifically education and social development.
A recipient of the Governor’s Gold Coin Award for her humanitarian services, she founded her Dream Up, Speak Up, Stand Up project in 2013 at the age of 10, to inspire young children on a global scale to dream big and reach higher.
Her influence is global and her foundation gives an annual awards to First Ladies and Gender ministers on the African continent, in recognition of their efforts with regards to promoting girls education.
The 20-year-old is a student at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) but continues to maintain a busy global schedule (Source: internet).
