By Michael Fisch
law community
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, many companies looked to do something—anything—to address the persistent problem of racial inequality in our country. In the face of such an intractable issue, many well-meaning initiatives lost momentum. If he didn’t want his company’s efforts to do likewise, Abim Kolawole, JD ’95, knew he’d have to work with a team to build “networks that create the conditions necessary to ensure continued progress. You need to connect the dots as you launch initiatives,” he says—even if you don’t know exactly where the connection points are when you get started.
Kolawole is chief audit executive for Northwestern Mutual, the Milwaukee-based insurance and financial planning giant. When the company launched a new Sustained Action for Racial Equity (SARE) initiative, an effort spearheaded by CEO John Schlifske, Kolawole was appointed as its executive sponsor. Under his leadership, the SARE team produced a series of programs to tackle elements of the racial wealth gap, including the challenges facing many Black/African American entrepreneurs in accessing capital; that demographic collectively receives less than 2% of venture capital investments.
To address that trend, Kolawole had in mind people like Chad Johnson, a Milwaukee-based entrepreneur. Johnson’s startup, Tip a ScRxipt, aims to mitigate soaring out-of-pocket medical costs by enabling employers to load money onto healthcare debit cards to help individuals pay those bills.
Johnson joined the Northwestern Mutual Black Founder Accelerator, which provides an investment of $100,000 to selected entrepreneurs, coupled with a 12-week business training program, mentorship, and access to venture capital partners.
Getting funding—“getting in the game,” as Kolawole puts it—is the first challenge for entrepreneurs, but there are others, such as making sure products are ready for primetime and have logical markets. “Capital is one thing,” Johnson notes, “but having a mentor, having an organization that is successful that you can go to and say, ‘Here’s what I’m struggling with,’ that’s really the ancillary benefit.”
Kolawole was exhilarated to see that after graduating from the accelerator, Johnson received follow-on investment from a Milwaukee-based venture capital firm that Northwestern Mutual had also invested in. That success, he says, “just warmed my heart,” and represented another dot connected.
“It’s created a wave of support where the community wants to see Tip a ScRxipt and others in this ecosystem succeed,” adds Johnson. He had never met Kolawole before the accelerator, but now runs into him regularly, especially at Bucks games. He describes his mentor as a “calm and cool collaborator. Even though you see his face all over the place, he’s not one of those loud, boisterous advocates and supporters. You see his fingerprints behind the scenes on things you may not know or be aware of.”
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winter 2024
Photograph courtesy of Abim Kolawole
Kolawole was born in Ithaca, New York, but grew up in Nigeria, where he studied law as an undergraduate. Looking to get a more advanced degree when he moved back to the U.S. in the early ’90s, he stopped by Suffolk Law on a trip to Boston and wandered the halls. He struck up a conversation with John Deliso, JD ’72, then an associate dean, about Nigerian legal education. Send me a note, Deliso encouraged, which Kolawole did. The experience stuck with him, informing his decision to attend Suffolk Law.
When he came to the Law School, Kolawole developed an interest in corporate finance and securities; one of his favorite classes was on securities regulation, taught by Peter Ambrosini. After graduating, he continued to pursue his passion for securities law as a staff attorney at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division in New York, investigating and prosecuting insider trading and accounting fraud cases, among others. After a few years at the SEC, he went on to private law practice at New York-based law firms until he moved to the law department at Northwestern Mutual and then executive roles within the company. Kolawole has now worked at Northwestern Mutual for 20 years.
He credits his Suffolk Law education with sharpening his analytical thinking and business judgment and enabling him to take on several roles within law practice and business over his career.
Though he lives in Wisconsin, Kolawole has kept up his Suffolk connections. When he rose to his current position at Northwestern, Suffolk President Marisa Kelly and Dean Andrew Perlman both reached out to congratulate him. Such small but important moments, he says, help create “this ecosystem of a community. Being able to grow, develop, have a family here—all that is based on that foundational legal education that I got from Suffolk.”
The racial equity work he leads serves multiple purposes, Kolawole says, helping small businesses, contributing to Northwestern Mutual’s goal to eliminate financial anxiety for all Americans, and aiding in the company’s own growth strategy.
Addressing such complex problems takes time, but Kolawole and the team are building for the long term. The Black Founder Accelerator is in its third year and just announced its sixth cohort—continuing to build networks and connect the dots.
More than an education
Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company and its subsidiaries in Milwaukee, WI.