Biography
Colette Otusheso is an experienced, value driven marketing, communications and project management professional with a proven record of championing organizational wide initiatives within cross- functional teams. Colette has worked with well-established global and local organizations including VIACOM International Media Networks Africa and MNET Africa. As marketing and Events Manager at Mnet, Colette was instrumental in the successful launch of several Africa Magic channels across Africa as well as the marketing of MNET's biggest properties, including Big Brother Africa, Tinsel, Naija Sings, Face of Africa and other MNET shows. At VIACOM, Colette spearheaded major MTV, Nickelodeon and BET projects in Nigeria including the biggest music awards in Africa, the MTV Africa Music Awards (MAMA's), The award-winning MTV Shuga, a multimedia drama campaign which educates youths on HIV, safe sex and teen pregnancy, MTV meets, the show that allows young people to meet world leaders and influencers such as President Jacob Zuma, Former First Lady Michelle Obama, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Alike Dangote, Richard Branson, Russell Simmons and more. She also worked on the very success MTV Africa All Stars campaign in both Nigeria and South Africa, the MTV VJ Search, The BET Awards, BET Top Actor and the Dora the Explorer financial literacy campaigns across Nigeria. Colette is the Head of a new exciting Lagos based multi-media content creation start- up, Accelerate (www.acceleratetv.com) inspired by Access Bank. Accelerate is an online youth focused digital content entertainment hub and online channel specializing in educational, empowering and entertaining content creation for the new African millennial with the focus of taking Africa to the world. Accelerate was launched in 2016 as a key platform for Access Bank to support the creative industry. The objective is for Accelerate to be one of the leading online content creation platforms in the country supporting young people to achieve their dreams in the sector. A secondary objective was to ensure that Accelerate is at the forefront of media and innovation in Nigeria, providing ground- breaking content to the rest of the world. With a buzz worthy website, app and growing YouTube channel, Accelerate works hard to maintain its ethos of the 3 E's to Educate, Empower and Entertain, via its content creation, event curation and empowerment cultivation activities. Hosting fashion, music and film masterclasses annually, Accelerate empowers the youth and equips them with the training and skills to secure full time jobs. Some of these training and masterclasses have been with great names in the global creative industry. Colette has always championed youth empowerment and through Accelerate she created The Accelerate Filmmaker project which is a multifaceted film training program aimed at training young budding filmmakers 25 years and under. The yearly campaign was created to empower the youth by exposing them to much needed capacity building, training and mentor-ship in the concept of storytelling, script writing, producing, directing, film making and the full stack of skills required by modern filmmakers to excel as creators within the Nigerian film industry. Once the students have completed their film making training, they pitch their ideas and the best 5 film ideas are made into short films and premiered at the Africa International Film Festival. The short films created from the Accelerate Filmmaker project have been showcased at various local and International Film Festivals, worldwide. Some of these include: The New York African Film Festival, the Silicon Valley Film Festival in the USA, African in Motion Film Festival in the UK, Durban Film Festival, South Africa, and the Realtime Film Festival and the , Lights Camera Action Film Festival. The films have also been used for training sessions for corporate team building exercises with the focus on collaboration. So far, the project has trained over 150 young Nigerians and directly impacted over 1000 Nigerian youth. In 2018 one of the short films created through the Accelerate Filmmaker project won the Africa Magic Viewer's Choice Awards (AMVCA) for the category - Best short film. The AMVCA's are perceived as the OSCARS of Africa. Again In 2019 an Accelerate filmmaker project short film won the Filmone and Moet & Chandon Film Gala for the Best short film. In 2020 the project has again won the Moet & Chandon Best Short Film and The Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards (AMVCA's) for best short film 2020. The successes of the Accelerate short films encapsulates the core values of the Accelerate Filmmaker Project, through the education and empowerment of young filmmakers giving them the training and tools to tell their own stories and create potentially award-winning films. In 2015, Colette was named one of the 15 most powerful women in Nigerian entertainment and in 2017 was named International Women's day's 10 most popular women in Nigeria. She was named top 50 leading women in corporate Nigeria in 2019 and was in the same year also recognized as one of a 100 high achievers of African Descent around the world working in public and private sectors under media and culture by the United Nations backed MIPAD organization. Colette picked up an Award for Innovation for Accelerate in Recognition of New Thinking in Digital Storytelling and Television Programming at the Women in Journalism Africa Awards 2017. She recently spoke to The Georgetown University's Africa Business conference on The African Value Chain: Harnessing Local Talent and Opportunity and the importance of Media and Entertainment in developing the continent.
