Tunde Ekpekurede is an entrepreneur by nature with a strong “can do” personality and have had the opportunity of starting two companies and building them from the ground up. His work experience in Nigeria, Ireland and the UK has exposed him to a great deal of culture issues. In 1999, Tunde Ekpekurede organized a football club (Ekpekurede Football Club) with underprivileged youths in Sapele, Delta State Nigeria. That club went on to win the Delta State Division one cup sponsored by Ecobank in 2007 and later that year represented Delta State at the National Football Competition, with some of his club players now playing football at the international level. In 2010, He began organizing empowerment classes for unemployed graduates, teenage entrepreneurship classes and Skill acquisition classes. Since 2010, over a thousand persons have benefited from his foundation programs
In October 2011, ABB Powerlines Limited was in a big mess as Diamond Bank considered its project leadership to be too weak to complete the project. Taking the responsibility to deliver the transmission line within 18 months, Tunde Ekpekurede knew that it meant creating plans to hire nearly 300 project personnel within weeks, creating plans to link the power plant with seven substations – (78Km of 33KV voltage power and 28km of 11KV power to be evacuated from the sub stations). In six months, ABB Powerlines Limited was no longer on the critical path of completing the Project, the company had moved from number 4 to number 2 in the scale of best performing EPC Contractors. He and his team received a number of commendations from the client and received numerous awards for their exceptional performance.
As General Manager of Stoner Benton Precast, East Sussex (UK), in July 2006, Tunde Ekpekurede was saddled with changing a company that has been in a stable family for over 50 years. As leader of the management team that acquired the company, he was not in doubt of the reason for the acquisition. Flynn Concrete Products Limited (Ireland), has for six months been on the lookout for acquisition targets in the UK to help it put its foot in the more lucrative UK market. By July 2007, he moved on to Titan Precast Limited, Cookstown, Northern Ireland (UK) as GM/CEO. He succeeded with Titan Precast Limited. From a loss making company, bleeding cash in millions of British pounds sterling. Within a year, he reduced the wage bill by 15%, improved asset utilization from approximately 65% to 95%, developed a high performing culture, increase sales by 9% and drastically improved customer perception and service reliability.
Tunde Ekpekurede graduated from the University of Benin (Nigeria) as the best structural engineering graduate in December 1989 with Second class upper degree and winner of the Professor Smith memorial award on account of his research work on the behavior of piled structures. He followed up with an MBA from the Micheal Smurfit Graduate School of Business, University College, Dublin (Republic of Ireland) in July 2004. He is an Alumnus of the Lagos Business School, having completed the Advance Management Program in 2001 (AMP-12). He has attended numerous courses including a project management certification course at Harvard University (USA), and hold a certificate in Personal Leadership from Columbia Business School (USA).
He is married to Dr (Mrs) Faith Ekpekurede and together they have four children.
