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Lawrence Barbara
Lawrence Barbara Quick Facts
Barbara Lawrence is the MD of Insolitus Nigeria Ltd., a company she set up in 2008, after 20+ years of extensive experience and career with the Shell Development Company of Nigeria Ltd. She is a graduate of Chemistry from the University of Lagos. She also has a Masters in Environmental Chemistry from the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK and a Public Relations Diploma from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, UK.
She started her working career with the Vanguard Newspapers, Lagos, where she was a columnist and features writer before joining The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, SPDC as a Pollution Control Supervisor in the Environmental Department in 1987. She was the first woman employed in that department. Her job at that time involved a lot of fieldwork, which gave her a good knowledge of the company's activities and operational areas. After eight years of various environmental positions, she was transferred to the Shell Centre, London as a member of the Nigeria Issue team responsible for managing all the allegations, Human Rights, Environmental, and Ogoni ‐ made against SPDC in the late 90’s by NGOs and others around the world. Part of her job was to engage other Shell companies’ stakeholders on their behalf, often working with Senior Shell Group leaders.
On her return to Nigeria, she became the Head, External Relations Strategy & Planning for SPDC in 2000, responsible for business planning/strategies for Shell Nigeria’s Reputation Management. A key challenge of the job was integrating external relations with community management, sustainable development and security management into a corporate programme for managing stakeholders in a consistent manner. She also developed management system to support engagement / communication process including first of its kind Stakeholder engagement manual in the Shell Group.
As the Transformation Manager in 2003, the key challenge was helping the leadership of the company (Shell Nigeria) to drive and move the change program for the Company forward. This role involved extensive networking with the Directors, other senior leaders in the company and around the Shell Group worldwide. She was also responsible for driving change, internal communication , embedding required behaviours and ways of working to improve business performance and organisational effectiveness.
In 2007 she became the Regional OE (Organizational Effectiveness), Change & Planning Manger for Shell Africa, from where she took early retirement in 2008. Barbara has complemented her vast experience with a diverse range of local and offshore training, and is an alumnus of the prestigious IMD Switzerland) and INSEAD (Singapore) institutions.
She has a passion for Personal Accountability and is committed to driving this amongst youths and their parents She is the Founder of Act Right, a reachout organisation for the promotion of Personal Accountability and Leadership amongst Youths. Her purpose in life is “to Inspire and motivate others to be the best they can be”. She is the authour of Nuggets of Self Development, which was recently published.
