About
A career built on structure in service of culture.
Creative Economy Strategist, Program Management Professional, Talent Manager and Digital Communications Executive helping organisations, institutions, leaders and creators move from vision to execution.
Toluwalase Benjamin Eniola
Nigeria (Lagos & Abuja) | Canada (Toronto)
I work at the intersection of creativity and institutions, the place where cultural ambition either becomes an economy or stays a moment.
My route into this work was not institutional. It began with self-initiated community and youth projects: small, under-resourced, stubbornly delivered. That decade taught me the discipline that everything since has depended on: structure, not scale, is what makes impact durable, and that the people you are building for belong in the design room.
From there I moved into the creative economy properly: representing talent, negotiating partnerships and building the commercial infrastructure that lets creators earn from their work rather than merely be celebrated for it. In 2022 I founded Talentra to do that professionally, with management grounded in contracts, rights, reporting and long-horizon career strategy rather than improvisation.
As Brand Manager at Chess in Slums Africa, I have supported the Chess in Every School initiative, positioning chess as an accessible tool for learning, youth development, community engagement and opportunity creation. My work has connected the initiative with wider education and social-impact goals, strengthened partnership and stakeholder thinking, and helped turn a compelling concept into a structured, scalable programme.
In government, I served as Special Assistant on New Media to the Honorable Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, leading digital communications and helping the Minister and Ministry communicate a complex, high-scrutiny national mandate with clarity. Since 2025, at the Office of the Special Assistant to the President on Arts, Culture and Creative Economy, I have supported the national creative economy agenda through programme design, partnerships and the positioning of Nigerian culture as a serious economic proposition.
Across all of it the work is the same shape: read the system, design the intervention, build the coalition, deliver it, measure it, and leave behind something that functions without me.
From community work to national policy.
Social entrepreneurship & community initiatives
Youth development, skills and community programming: the origin of a career built on structure in service of people.
Talent management & creator representation
Founded Talentra and began representing creators, negotiating brand partnerships and building career architecture around African talent.
Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs & Poverty Alleviation
Served as Special Assistant on New Media to the Honorable Minister, leading digital communications and public-facing narratives for the Minister and Ministry.
Presidential creative economy office
Arts, culture and creative economy strategy at the centre of national government, spanning programmes, partnerships and international positioning.
Where my attention goes.
Creative Economy Development
Building the market and policy infrastructure that lets creative work pay for itself.
Arts & Culture
Custodianship, contemporary practice and the institutions that carry both forward.
Tourism
Culture as destination through heritage, festivals and place-based economies.
Social Entrepreneurship
Ventures where the impact model and the business model are the same model.
Public Sector Innovation
Delivery units, data and design thinking inside government.
Youth Development
Skills, opportunity and pathways for Africa's youngest workforce.
Strategic Partnerships
Public-private and international alliances as an execution multiplier.
Creative Technology
Platforms, IP and distribution tools reshaping how African work travels.
Connecting Africa to global creative economy opportunity.
The next decade of African creative work will not be decided by talent. It will be decided by access to capital, distribution, markets and to the institutional partnerships that make cross-border work ordinary rather than exceptional.
My focus is building that connective tissue: programmes that create real market access, partnerships that bring international capital and platforms into African creative value chains, and policy input that treats culture as an asset class rather than a ceremony.
The ambition is simple. Make it normal for African creative enterprises to compete, and be paid, at global scale.
Contact
Let’s build something meaningful.
Open to consulting, advisory, speaking and partnership conversations with organisations building at the intersection of culture, government and enterprise.