Freedom Obanijesu Emmanuel

Freedom is the first of five children. His father, Robert Emmanuel, is a clergyman and the head pastor of Christ Motion Evangelical Ministry. His mother, Omowunmi Emmanuel, is a businesswoman and the founder of Emmabert Stores. Between his parents and his four younger siblings, two sisters and two brothers, the Emmanuel household numbers seven.

He started working before he was ten. From age nine, he helped in his mother’s shop, retailing frozen foods, fish, chicken parts, and turkey parts, to customers. It was his first real exposure to selling: pricing, customers, and the discipline of running a stall day after day.

At sixteen, Freedom started learning POP (Plaster of Paris) ceiling installation. He took to it fast. By eighteen, he had earned enough trust on site that his employer would leave entire projects in his hands. By the time he got to university, he was already installing POP ceilings and taking on painting jobs for his lecturers and others beyond campus, running skilled trade work alongside his studies.

Freedom studied Building Technology at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), a five-year programme he began in 2018. COVID-19 disruptions pushed his graduation to 2024, and he completed the programme with a Second Class Upper degree, making him a B.Tech holder. He completed his NYSC service year from April 2025 to March 2026, during which he won awards from notable organisations and received a grant that helped fuel Masterpiece Decor, the POP ceiling installation agency he built on the back of the trade skills he’d been developing since sixteen. He is working toward an MBA, expected by September 2027.

Freedom had fallen for marketing well before he pursued it seriously, he just kept putting it off. That changed on October 1, 2020. Coming back from work that night with his brother Gabriel and a brother from his church, they were in a serious accident in Ogijo, Ogun State. Freedom broke his leg. So did the others involved. It was a hard, forced pause, and it reset how he thought about time and what he was doing with his.

By January 2021, he had committed to marketing fully, and became, in his own words, obsessed with it. What drew him in was its reach: marketing wasn’t tied to one industry the way a trade skill or a single job was. It was a discipline he could take anywhere.

Freedom’s marketing career started in Akure, Ondo State, first at iCredence Concept, then WAF Institute, where he built inbound pipelines and referral partnerships for a fintech education institute. From there he moved to Swiftly Autostore (Swires Technologies), running paid campaigns across Meta, Google, and TikTok, and to The Growth Hub, before taking on Head of Sales & Marketing at Newton Academy, where he built the school’s entire sales and marketing operation from scratch.

He also spent a year, April 2025 to April 2026, as a Digital Literacy Trainer with MindThe_GapNg x NITDA under the DL4ALL initiative, delivering practical digital skills training to underserved communities in Bayelsa State as part of NYSC and SDG-aligned community impact work.

As his career moved to Lagos, he led growth and acquisition at VenDoor Africa, then became Social Media & Digital Marketing Manager at Hyphen Connect AI, a UK-based AI company, building its content engine and full-funnel marketing systems from the ground up. In March 2026, he founded Lumenvox Academy, an AI skills academy he built end to end: curriculum, funnel, student portal, and affiliate programme, and now runs Lumenvox Media alongside it.

Freedom is a 100 Under 40 Honoree in Technology & Innovation from The Achievers Summit, 2nd Runner Up at Lagos Business School’s Tech Leap Pitch, and 1st Place winner of NYSC’s Copreneurship Pitch. He has authored two books, Sell or Starve and Marketing Blueprint. He also hosts the Founders Execution Roundtable, a private, in-person room in Ikeja, Lagos, where founders work through real business bottlenecks together.

He is still single, still based in Lagos, and still, when the work allows, willing to pick up a POP ceiling job through Masterpiece Decor, the trade that taught him discipline before marketing ever did.