Shot By Brock

People like Yewande Akinola inspire me. She’s well aware of the voices in her head that try to stop her doing things, but she refuses to let them hold her back. Instead of allowing them to undermine her dreams of becoming an engineer, she overcame them and left Nigeria to study at Warwick University in the UK. Instead of letting the voices that asked, “but what will people think?” hold her back when she was invited by Channel 4 and National Geographic to present the television show Titanic: The Mission, instead she brushed them to one side and grasped the opportunity with both hands. Like all of us, she has those voices in her head telling her the task is too big, that she’s not good enough, that she’ll fail if she tries. But her excitement for what could go right is much more powerful than her fear of what might go wrong. As a child she would lie on her back and stare at the stars overwhelmed by the potential of what she could achieve. And she’s achieved so much. A specialist in water management, while h