Duro Oye: My Life on Purpose
Duro Oye is the CEO and founder of the award-winning social mobility organisation 20/20 Levels. Since its inception in 2013, the organisation has empowered over 1,700 black and racially underrepresented young people through opportunities to maximise their potential, find their purpose and land a job that allows them to be the best version of themselves.
What does purpose mean to you?
To me, purpose means a reason for being. It is what I believe I have been placed here to accomplish. On a business level, purpose is the overarching reason for a company’s existence beyond just profit-making. It’s about the impact that we aspire to have on the world through the work that we do. For us at 20/20 Levels, the idea of a purpose is foundational to our existence.
How does purpose manifest at 20/20 Levels?
Our purpose is to inspire young people and empower them with the opportunities that they need to become the best version of themselves. We do that through personal, career and business development. Our programmes support young, black, racially underrepresented individuals to transform ideas into viable businesses by connecting them to seasoned business mentors who can help them on their journey from launching to scaling their businesses. At the end of their cohort, they showcase their businesses and we select five people that pitch for pre-investment to take their business to the next level.
Purpose is the overarching reason for a company’s existence beyond just profit-making. It’s about the impact that we aspire to have on the world through the work that we do.
In terms of personal development, we also do a 10-week programme to support young people in reflecting on their purpose in a structured, valuable and introspective way. The end goal is that they understand what makes them tick, they know what kind of role or industry they want to aim for and we can connect them to the sectors and companies where they can flourish.
How has being guided by a purpose changed the way you work?
To really live our purpose as an organisation, we take a holistic approach – we teach young people things that aren’t taught as part of the national curriculum, like financial literacy, money management, digital skills, corporate social etiquette, mindfulness and breathwork exercises to deal with social anxiety.
Some of these things are the intangible skills that underrepresented and minority groups miss out on developing and they can be incredibly valuable in building a career. We’ve been able to help many young people secure meaningful employment as a result of our work.
Because of the social capital that minority groups can be susceptible to miss out on, we target our support based on what they really need to develop in order to land a role that allows them to be the best version of themselves. We’re constantly tweaking and evolving our programs to meet the needs of young people and put that at the forefront of our business. Otherwise, we’re not doing what we set out to do.
When do you feel most purposeful?
It’s not easy to pinpoint – it can come in many different forms, but it’s essentially any time I see a young person from our alumni network who has landed a new job or just got a promotion, or launched a new business. Those moments fill me with bursts of purposefulness.
It felt like something I was called to do, even if I only helped one person.
Have you ever felt like giving up?
I don’t think I ever had a real feeling of giving up completely, because I wasn’t coming from a position of trying to only make money. It feels like something I was called to do, even if I only helped one person.
What makes you feel fulfilled professionally?
Professional fulfilment is quite a dynamic concept that has evolved over the course of my career, but some things have stuck because they underpin my relationship to work: ensuring my personal values are aligned with my work; contributing to a greater cause; injecting variety and creativity into my job; allowing opportunities for personal and professional growth; and, more recently, finding a balance between work and family life.
What is the hardest thing about being purpose-driven?
There are trade-offs that come at different stages in the journey of being purpose-led. When I was starting out on my journey, I left a lucrative career in the creative industry to set up a community interest company supporting young people. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy; there was no visible path of how this would become profitable, or what it would even look like.
I held onto my belief that if I could get young people into the program, change their mindset and prepare them for the world of work, corporates would want access to that talent.
The first five years were difficult. I was self-funding the business and I was also stepping way outside of my comfort zone. My background was in creative services and now I was taking on areas like psychology and youth support and mentoring. I set up several side hustles – becoming a freelance filmmaker, or a wedding video production company – all while persevering with this idea of helping young people realise their potential.
I held onto my belief that if I could get young people into the program, change their mindset and prepare them for the world of work, corporates would want access to that talent. And in 2018, it happened and it has been growing in traction and scale ever since. But there were five years of building grit, resilience and perseverance in order to pursue my purpose.
Which leaders have inspired you?
Zimbabwean entrepreneur and philanthropist Strive Masiyiwa is an incredible inspiration to me. I knew very little about social impact or purpose until I met him in 2008. His commitment to making a positive impact beyond business success was totally novel to me at that point – I didn’t know that business could be structured with purpose at the very fabric of its being, but seeing the way that he conducted business showed me a completely different way of thinking that has defined how I run 20/20 Levels.
What would you like your legacy to be?
I want to be remembered as someone whose heart was focused on young people; whose life’s pursuit was dedicated to ensuring that opportunities were evenly distributed amongst those from low socioeconomic backgrounds and that the racial divide was non-existent.
