Uche Pedro is an award-winning Nigerian entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of BellaNaija, a media tech brand known for entertainment and lifestyle content. Under her leadership, BellaNaija's social footprint has grown through its collective brands - BellaNaija.com, BellaNaija Weddings and BellaNaija Style - to be the largest on the African continent with more than 200 million impressions each month.
Prior to the creating of her website BellaNaija, Uche worked for Shell Canada, Cadbury Middle East & Africa Unit in the UK, and Cadbury in Nigeria. In July 2006, she founded BellaNaija. Uche is a Fellow of TEDGlobal and a Nigeria Leadership Initiative associate. In 2013, Uche was honoured as the British Council International Young Media Entrepreneur of the Year for Nigeria. In 2014 and 2015, Forbes Magazine Online listed Uche among the 30 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs in Africa. In December 2015, she was listed amongst the Most Influential CEOs of 2015 by Ventures Africa as well as New African Woman's Women of the Year for 2015 and made the QUARTZ’S List of 30 African Innovators. In 2016, she won the African Blogger of the Year award at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards. In 2017, Uche was invited as a civic leader making a difference around the world for the first-ever Obama Foundation Summit and participated in the Stanford Seed Transformation Programme. In February 2018, Uche featured in the annual OkayAfrica100 Women campaign, celebrating extraordinary women from Africa and the diaspora making waves across a wide array of industries, while driving positive impact in their communities and the world at large. Uche was selected to participate in the 2018 campaign for Bill and Melinda Gates. Uche is passionate about impacting her community and nurturing the next generation. She is the founder of #BNDoGood - an impact -driven initiative which consistently supports a wide variety of non-profits and social impact organizations including LEAP Africa, Slum2School, Django Girls, Junior Achievement Nigeria and a long list of others. In 2018, Uche co-founded PVCitizen, an initiative to encourage millennials and Generation Z to register to vote and become active citizens. In November 2018, Uche received an ELOY Award for Innovation/Invention, reserved for a woman who has used her skills to create innovative ways to solve problems and also invented solutions to different challenges. In addition she was honoured with a Frown Awards by UNFPA/UNICEF for her efforts to protect the right of every girl child and contribution to the Abandonment of Female Genital Mutilation in Nigeria. Uche served as a host for the TEDxLagosSpotlight event in August 2018.
