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Mamobo Ogoro
Founder Gorm Media
This week we are so excited to introduce our community to Gorm Media founder Mamobo Ogoro. Here, she describes her startup journey.
How would you describe yourself in 6 words or less?
Building unity through conversation and compassion.
What prompted you to start your business?
Gorm Media is a developing social enterprise that curates common ground. Our core mission is to spark a movement of unity and shared understanding, in which we critically engage with social issues with our community through video content. Gorm Media started out of frustration with the level of black and white conversations that were happening within the general public, particularly with race & racism. As someone who is in the academic world, we are forced to critically think in almost everything we do and the everyday person may not have the chance to do that deep diving. So during the height of Covid-19, I began the initiative with the Zoom oriented webshow 'Gorm TV' which voices the different opinions Irish young people from multiple backgrounds and dissects the social issues that affect Ireland's multicultural generation. With that, we quickly grew and rebranded to Gorm Media, and now developing an in-person pilot production that truly embodies our vision.
Can you tell us a bit more about you? (your background)
I wear a lot of hats, but they all revolve around the strong desire to bring people together. I was born in Nigeria and moved to Wexford, Ireland with my family at 4, and through both my life experience and love for knowledge, it spurred me on the academic path of social psychology, particularly studying discrimination, identity & prejudice. I am currently in the 3rd year of my Ph.D. in UL, studying social representations of first and second generations in Ireland. I am also a creative that loves all things music. I am a singer/songwriter and currently putting my over-organisational skills to great use by curating Lasta Festival, a national youth festival supported by Brightening Air and theatres across Ireland (by the way I've learned so much about marketing/promotion with this experience that I'm applying to Gorm). I am also an active community member and work with initiatives such as MMCN (midwest migrant community network) and Doras Luimni to promote the integration of new migrant communities to Ireland. I am a lover of food and I have recently gotten a bug for gardening and am now a proud plant mom to my indoor jungle called Florence.
Fill us in on your current female founder journey and what would you like to share with the AwakenHub community?
I am just under 1 year in my entrepreneurial journey and it is a stressful, exciting, scary and fulfilling journey so far! I am a person who believes that things happen for a reason, and I believe that finding AwakenHub was supposed to happen. My first event was that of young female entrepreneurs, and it filled me with so much motivation and light, if they can do it, I can do it too! Being a 24-year-old Black woman, I often felt (and still do sometimes) that my voice would be overlooked in the business world, but the support so far I have received from those who I have met through AwekenHub has been breathtaking.
How has being part of the AwakenHub community helped your business?
Through the networking sessions, I have met wonderful people who have mentored me on the steps I should take in the startup, particularly in marketing, leadership and building an audience. The community has guided me in some of the foundational skills one needs to be a successful entrepreneur and I cannot wait to eventually give back.
Have you an ‘ask’ which we can share with fellow #Awakenhubbers
Gorm Media is a digitally native business that is reliant on online engagement, so please follow us on social media @gormmedia and watch our journey as a social enterprise.
More about Gorm Media:
Gorm Media, is a digital media platform that curates common ground in social issues. With a shared understanding that difference does not mean division, our impact lies within the core mission to spark a movement of unity and shared understanding, in which we critically engage with social issues and unify our community through curiosity, conversation, and creativity. We create fast passed engaging content that both educates and entertains (we like to call it edutainment) and sparks curiosity within our audience to create a better more empathetic world for all of us.
Website: www.gormmedia.com
Follow Gorm Media on Twitter: @gormmedia
More about Mamobo:
Mamobo Ogoro is a social psychology Ph.D. candidate and social entrepreneur. Fueled by both her personal experience as an Afro-Irish person growing up in Ireland and her previous work on prejudice, racism, and dual cultural identity, Mamobo’s research highlights the media and social representations of multicultural people in Ireland. As the founder of Gorm Media, an online digital platform that curates common ground in social issues, Mamobo is on a personal mission to unify her community to untimely spark a movement of unity and shared understanding within humanity.
Follow Mamobo’s work here: Linktree.com/mamobo