Dr. Glory Enyinnaya

Dr. Glory Enyinnaya

Summary

Dr. Glory Enyinnaya is a Nigerian academic and strategy consultant whose work bridges theory and action in inclusive finance, institutional entrepreneurship, and fintech. As Academic Director of the Institutional Growth Initiative (IGI) at Pan-Atlantic University, she leads research on change readiness—a theory she developed and published in Harvard Business Review to explain how entrepreneurs in complex, low-trust environments gain legitimacy and scale. As founder of Kleos Advisory, she led national initiatives such as YouThrive, a partnership with Access Bank, FMO, and the Office of the Vice President of Nigeria, designed to train four million entrepreneurs across Africa. A former consultant with Accenture and Ernst & Young, she is the author of a forthcoming book with Palgrave Macmillan and a member of Harvard Business School’s Forum for Growth and Innovation. Her work translates theory into scalable frameworks that enable entrepreneurs in emerging markets to thrive.

Professional Bio

Dr. Glory Enyinnaya is a management scholar whose research explores how entrepreneurs in emerging markets gain legitimacy and achieve long-term performance in institutionally complex environments. Her work focuses on the theory of change readiness—a construct she developed to explain how new ventures in low-trust, high-friction systems survive and scale. This theory was introduced in Harvard Business Review (2023) and now underpins a broader research program housed at the Institutional Growth Initiative (IGI), which she leads as founding Academic Director at Pan-Atlantic University.

Her forthcoming book, Institutional Entrepreneurship in African Fintech, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan, investigates how African fintech firms navigate institutional voids to drive financial inclusion and resilience.

Dr. Enyinnaya holds a PhD in Management from Pan-Atlantic University, an MBA in General Management from Lagos Business School, and a First-Class Honours degree in Accounting—graduating as valedictorian at all three levels. She has also received executive education from Wharton, Stanford and MIT. She is a certified Prosci Change Management Practitioner and an accredited Business Development consultant (BDSP).

Before joining academia, she worked with Accenture and Ernst & Young, leading World Bank–assisted digital transformation and organizational change projects. She is also the founder of Kleos Advisory Africa, a consulting firm that serves as implementation partner for field research and SME support initiatives. Under her leadership, Kleos partnered with Africa’s largest bank, Access Bank, and the Office of the Vice President of Nigeria on YouThrive, a national entrepreneurship program supported by the Dutch development bank FMO. The objective of YouThrive was to train 4 million entrepreneurs in 4 years. Through this platform, Dr. Enyinnaya not only applied her research on institutional entrepreneurship to strengthen SME capacity but also embodied the role of an institutional entrepreneur—working across public–private boundaries to create legitimacy and scale impact in complex environments.

At Pan-Atlantic University, she teaches Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Business Startup, Business Ethics, E-commerce, and Project Management across undergraduate, MBA, and doctoral programs. She also contributes to leadership development initiatives at Lagos Business School, for top-tier companies such as NLNG and NNPC.

Dr. Enyinnaya’s research has been recognized internationally. She is a research associate at GAEIA, a program sponsored by the Centre for Human Rights and International Justice at Stanford University, a member of the Forum for Growth and Innovation at Harvard Business School (founded by Clayton Christensen), a member of the Academy of Management, and a former member of the governing board of Beta Gamma Sigma, the global honor society for business excellence. She was named one of the Top 50 MBA Success Stories by AMBA UK and was a finalist for the Wall Street Journal’s Global MBA
Student of the Year Award.

She is passionate about building the intellectual infrastructure for Africa-focused theory in management and entrepreneurship. 

Publications

Journal Articles

• Enyinnaya, G., & Dakare, O. (2023). What African Fintech Startups Can Teach
  Silicon Valley About Longevity. Harvard Business Review.
• Enyinnaya, G. (2023). The Influence of Institutional Entrepreneurship Practices on
  Organizational Legitimacy and Organizational Performance: A Case Study of the
  Nigerian Fintech Industry. Doctoral Dissertation, Pan-Atlantic University.

Books and Forthcoming Works 

• Enyinnaya, G. (Forthcoming, 2025). Institutional Entrepreneurship in African Fintech.
  Palgrave Macmillan
• Enyinnaya, G. (Forthcoming, 2025). Family-Owned Businesses in DEMs (Africa): A
  Theoretical Model Analysis. In Nwuke, O., & Ngwu, F. (Eds.), Managing
  Family-Owned Businesses in Developing & Emerging Markets: Strategies that Work.
  Routledge-Taylor & Francis.

Book Chapters

• Enyinnaya, G., & Ogbechie, R. (2024). Human Quality Treatment: The Ethics of Respect and Team Growth. In Business Ethics in Africa, Volume I. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Ovadje, F., & Enyinnaya, G. (2018). Change Leaders in the Public Sector: An Interview with Governor Peter Obi. In Routledge Handbook of Organizational Change in Africa. Routledge.
• Enyinnaya, G. (2021). Platforms and Female Entrepreneurship in Africa: Case Studies from Nigeria. In Africa’s Platforms and the Evolving Sharing Economy: Emerging Research and Opportunities. IGI Global.
• Enyinnaya, G. (2022). Competencies, Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Required to Work and Grow in Retail. In Building Careers to Grow Africa’s Retail Businesses. Noirledge Publishing.

Contact

Email: genyinnaya@pau.edu.ng
Personal website: www.gloryenyinnaya.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glory-enyinnaya-mba/