Edem Ossai is a Lawyer and  Policy researcher with over 15 years of experience in leading community-based strategies and interventions in education, youth development and civic engagement as well as gender equality. Her areas of specialization include girls education research, education in emergencies and policy guidelines for remote education in the context of developing nations and conflict-affected societies. An honours graduate of Law from Obafemi Awolowo University (LL.B. 2007), Edem was called to the Nigerian Bar in 2008. She has an MA in Cultural and Media Studies from the University of Ibadan and a second Masters (MAIDP, 2019) in International Dev. & Policy from University of Chicago, USA. In 2016, Edem was selected by the US State Dept. as a Mandela Washington Fellow (Certificate in Civic Leadership from Arizona State University). In 2018, she was selected as an inaugural Obama by the prestigious Barrack Obama Foundation and currently, she is an Echidna Global Scholar at Brookings Institution, DC, USA. She is currently the Founder of the Teachers Hub, a dedicated digital skills acquisition and knowledge resource corner for school teachers in Oyo State.

As an NGO executive for the past 10 years, she has been responsible for leading her organization to plan and implement strategies reaching over ten thousand educationally disadvantaged children and youth in Nigeria’s South-West region, with a compendium of formal and digital literacy acquisition programs. Her Organisation – MAYEIN has also engaged over 3000 stakeholders in education namely school providers, teachers, PTAs, and public sector officials in education in states across South-West Nigeria, in advocacy programs towards improving girls’ education and school completion rates. These experiences led to her appointment as a lead technical consultant on the global award-winning project ‘Girls Connect’ (phase II), implemented by international NGO -Girl Effect, in 2017, which impacted over 7000 girls in Northern Nigeria with safety education, financial literacy and life skills. In 2020, her organisation also established a Model Youth Centre in Ojoo area of Ibadan which provides library services, vocational skills training, soft skills development and houses a state of the art ICT hub.  Currently her NGO is implementing the ‘Oyo e-Literacy’ project in Oyo which is empowering 1 million school children with basic computer skills so that they can engage in remote learning and become more future ready.

Edem Ossai is an active member of the board of various organisations.