Funke-Bucknor Obruthe – African Entrepreneur

The Nigerian entrepreneur is the CEO and founder of the company Zapphaire Events and is well-known as one of the pioneering event planners in Nigeria. She was even recognized and awarded for her work planning a Nigerian royal wedding, featured in CNN’s Inside Africa.

The plan was not to become an event planner, Obruthe actually went to school to become a Lawyer. She went to the University of Lagos and the Nigerian Law School in Abuja. After practicing law for a brief period of time, she then decided to switch careers.

After working at Tie Communication, which is an advertising agency, she found a new love for event planning. She then went on to start her own independent event planning enterprise and plan and organize many events in and around Nigeria.

Over the years, Obruthe has won many awards, like the Future Award for Entrepreneur of the Year. Plus, she took home the Wedding Planner Magazine Award for Wedding Planner of the Year. In 2011, she won the Go2girl Life Achievement, then in 2013 received the Nigerian Events Award for Outstanding Contribution to the event Industry. Recently, she was named one of the most influential women in the world by BBC.

The feminine name Funke has an African origin and means “God gives me to be loved”. While the name Bucknow is commonly used as a surname that is added after the name or even the middle name to be another family name, typically used for males in a tribe in Nigeria, or in Ghana languages.