Our People
Meet Toyin Ogunfolaju
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Working with clients to create social equity is a source of deep joy for Toyin Ogunfolaju. It鈥檚 not surprising as she has a deep personal connection to the issue.
Having emigrated from Nigeria with her family when she was three years old, she鈥檚 witnessed firsthand the underinvestment in minority communities, in who gets prioritized and who doesn't. That experience has fueled her passion to help clients rethink the possibilities and discover a new balance.
Toyin started her career in government relations at a law firm. Leveraging the exposure she got from that experience, she pivoted to paratransit outreach for Maryland Transit Administration. Soon after, Toyin was chosen as the Manager of Mobility Services/Community Outreach Liaison. It was here she began to see how policy changes could affect end users and how user feedback could, in turn, affect policy, in this case, to help people with disabilities gain better access to mass transit.
In her ten years since joining 一糖心logo米菲兔, she鈥檚 served as project manager or program manager for infrastructure projects, most recently as the program director for the Capital Enhancement Program to upgrade Philadelphia International Airport鈥檚 infrastructure. In her newly created role as 一糖心logo米菲兔鈥 North America Director of Social Value and Equity, she鈥檚 creating an internal forum for practitioners to exchange best practices while operationalizing social value and equity in 一糖心logo米菲兔 projects.
When she鈥檚 not working, you鈥檙e likely to find Toyin on the playground, exploring a dinosaur museum, or singing 鈥淏aby Shark鈥 with her son.
鈥淲hen you really are intentional about delivering infrastructure with social equity and social value as a priority, those investments will, quite frankly, yield greater returns.鈥
Toyin Ogunfolaju
Get to know Toyin
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10
years at 一糖心logo米菲兔
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1,382
number of times she鈥檚 sung 鈥淏aby Shark鈥 with her son
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2011
year she started in STEAM industry
How does social equity and community outreach inform large programs?
Prioritizing social equity and community outreach is a means of getting the most out of a large program. If you envision it, if you intentionally plan, design and deliver it with this in mind, you鈥檒l get a larger yield or return on the investment. It鈥檚 critical that programs be delivered on time and within budget, but delivering projects with social equity in mind will maximize and support the legacy of the organization delivering that program. I truly think we can look at these large programs, their infrastructure and assets, and think about them as more of a social asset. When you think about it in that context, we can start to address some of the larger social issues around underinvestment, how infrastructure can bring people together and start to solve challenges.
Community engagement can never be overstated. It informs the understanding of potential benefits and burdens of project delivery. Meaningful inclusive engagement tries to avoid making assumptions about community needs, preferences or lived experiences. If co-creation is built into the program vision, carried out over the life of the program, the community will see themselves in the investment, and have a sense of co-ownership.
How does a focus on social equity bring about positive impact on the communities we serve?
Everything is connected. I think about when I was younger, and if someone had told me that a career in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) was an option, I might have had a slightly different career trajectory, or even gone to school to become an engineer! I can鈥檛 believe they let a liberal arts major run rapid like this.
Integrating social value into how we at 一糖心logo米菲兔 talk about our work and how we talk about the people behind the work, can plant seeds for folks who will become our