"Women in research, especially biomedical research, face many obstacles and discrimination. Earlier in my career, the perception was that a woman had to choose between having a family and a career."

"So, when I got to grad school, it was a little different. My involvement with the Honors College was morphed. I was not really an Honors student which is more focused on undergrads."

"I see the work that I do as a calling – the scientific discoveries that we achieve impact lives and that gives me the strength to wake up the next morning and keep going."

"As far back as 2009, my leadership in health disparities research was recognised by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists and the Association of Black Health-System Pharmacists with the inaugural leadership award for health disparities. I was selected by the US Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs to give the inaugural Barbara Terry-Koroma Health Disparity Legacy Lecture in 2013."

"My ammunition for overcoming this discrimination is hard work and undeniable productivity and output."

"In the United States, what I have experienced as a woman is gender discrimination. It is coincidental that the earliest recollection of gender discrimination that I experienced was made by a female professor when I was in graduate school. The female professor told me that I would not be able to finish my graduate programme because I got married and was pregnant in my first year of graduate school"

"You don’t have to strive to be liked but always strive to be respected for your work."

"INSIGHT into Diversity, an online and print publication in the United States, gave me the Inspiring Women in STEM Award in 2016 in recognition of my effort in training underrepresented minorities for over two decades."

"The black population is disproportionately affected by cancer globally. I worked with several experts and institutions"

"But instead, I basically kind of took a pay cut for higher learning. But with that pay cut and all of these fellowships, I was able to keep my head above water and focus on learning. Focus on my Ph.D. program."

"AORTIC is the premier organisation for cancer research and training in Africa. As the chair of the AORTIC research committee, I work with outstanding cancer scientists within and outside Africa to provide scientific leadership and direction for cancer research in Africa."

"The Global Oncology Clinical Trials Congress for blacks is very dear to my heart given the underrepresentation of the black population in clinical trials."

"In 2017, it was rewarding to receive the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship, which allowed me to work on prostate cancer risk among men with institutions in Nigeria, including the University of Ilorin, and Covenant University."

"In Nigeria, while I was at the University of Ife, one of the things that I (and so many women) had to deal with was the sexual predators."

"I head a policy research unit at Kings College London on conflict, security and development, direct a peace and security Fellowship programme for African women and teach."

"...appropriate processing and handling are the problems."

"Hard work is the rule of the game. As a woman you need to work twice as hard in a male dominated position. She continued, keep your eye on the ball and reach out to people for mentoring bearing in mind that people are looking up to you."

"The reader is there to be schooled and herded about and put in their place. It’s taken me years to realize how absurd and borderline disturbing Achebe’s statement is. It points to the power differential that has always defined the writer-reader relationship in African literary culture. Really, it’s all about power."

"The reason African literature is sometimes preachy and heavy-handed is precisely because it has never really been inspired by the taste and desires of the African reader—by what the reader really wants. It’s been driven, instead, by the African writer and critic’s lust for literary significance."

"Give us the “digestible and quickly forgotten” stuff. I want more African writing with mass appeal. I want a Nollywood invasion of African literature. I want African writers to not take themselves too seriously for once and just write novels that Africans would find endlessly delightful and delicious."

"I want African writers to sell millions of copies, make good money, and live off their work. This is how publishing industries are nurtured—when they are able to tap into the pulse of mass culture."

"Brittle Paper is hard work. It takes its toll—given that I am also in the thick of writing a dissertation. But I love blogging. It’s as simple as that."

"I’ve run Brittle Paper out of pocket. But Brittle Paper is growing so fast, and it’s become more than clear to me that I need money, not only to run it in its present form, but also to take it to the next level."

"As every blogger knows, the bread and butter of good sites is great content. If you write things that people love, they will come to the blog."

"A blog is not a newspaper. If you want bare, unsullied facts, go read a newspaper."

"As a blogger, you learn to deal with criticisms and insults."

"Blogging is all about the slant. How can you take a set of facts, rearrange them, and serve them up to readers in a way that’d make them think or react? Besides, I learned pretty quickly that you can’t please everyone"

"Blogging is a totally different beast. When I realized that my training on writing research and conference papers did not really translate into blogging, I had to learn writing all over again. That was challenging!"

"Activism is probably too strong a word to use for it. But, I do have a politics regarding African writing in the sense that while I love British and Indian literature deeply, I also understand that African literature is the only literature I can really lay claims to or call my own."

"At the end of the day, Africans are the only ones who can really champion African literature. It is not enough to complain that the world misunderstands us and our work. We have to take the lead in showing the world what is awesome about African literature and how it should be read."

"African literature has not always been reader-driven. For Achebe to write with a straight face that a novelist is a teacher, you know we are dealing with a literary culture where the reader doesn’t really count for much."

"It’s an honor really for someone to write something and decide to share it with our readers."

"I keep my rejection letters gracious and appreciative. When I accept a submission, I try to say a word or two about what I find compelling about the work. So I take submissions seriously. But they can be overwhelming, and I do fall behind."

"...I don’t let the fear of getting into trouble decide what I write or don’t write."

"I want African writers to find inspiration in what Africans want to read not what they should read or what will save them or educate them or edify them."

"...when Brittle Paper first started, it was a general interest literary and philosophical blog. It was not centered on African literature."

"A whole new world of philosophical and literary texts were opened up to me. The more I immersed myself and delved deeper into these texts, I realized that I could not keep this utterly captivating universe of ideas to myself. It wasn’t enough to talk about these things in class with colleagues and Profs. I wanted more."

"I did not imagine it would become what it is today. I simply needed an outlet for my postgrad work. My first year as a doctoral student was one of the most intense, frustrating, but also the most beautiful moments in my life."

"I publish Brittle Paper so I can tell anyone who cares to listen what I find remarkable about African writing."

"The excitement you read in my style is a genuine expression of a reader’s love. African literature is beautiful stuff. As a blogger, I enjoy thinking up innovative ways of getting my readers to put aside all the assumptions and expectations they might have of African writing and simply encounter it from a place of love."

"Readers want to be excited about African literature, especially after decades of being told that African literature is little more than a political and cultural manual for African life."

"Contemporary readers want to fall in love with African writing. They want to enjoy it the way they enjoy African pop music and Nollywood. They want to be inspired by their favorite authors and gain access to their lives so that they can become fans. That’s precisely what we offer at Brittle Paper—the chance to consume African literature differently."

"The Teju Coles and Adichies and Vladislavicses will continue to write the so-called serious novels for critics and scholars like us. But aside from these “serious” writings, we need a new kind of literary production propelled entirely by the African reader and not the critic"

"Social media and on-site interaction with readers can never be too much. It’s something that one has to keep building."

"We do expect maximum cooperation from you as students to enable us accomplish the set objectives for which the STE was established.”"

"Our security network has been further enhanced to tackle the menace of cultism and other social vices coupled with our added leverage in skills development through our flexible skills development potentials"

"“One of the major results of the stimulation of your intellectual life that occurs in the College is the shrinking of your spiritual life. Sometimes, students get so confused with reconciling their classroom activities with the clashing of so many faiths that their spiritual live begins to weaken tremendously"

"Creativity is seeing opportunity where no one else did. It is finding magic in the humdrum of the everyday and the familiar."

"There is nothing as rewarding as being inspired by my students and their work, which happens on a daily basis."

"Social media is essentially having access to people’s curated collection of what they think is the best of the best from the web. It’s a wealth of blogging content and ideas."