Dhaba's third episode of Season 2 welcomes a true force of nature. Doyin Olorunfemi PhD chats with Joel Gill FRSA, creator of Dhaba

Summary

What if your life’s through-line is a flowchart—clear steps, smart loops, and a decision diamond that always points back to people? Meet Dr Do, an academic and entrepreneur who turned a “lame” degree in computer engineering into a powerful discipline for building community, scaling women-led enterprise, and teaching with clarity. Her story moves from a redundancy letter to leading a thousand-strong network, from sold-out conferences to a fully funded PhD, and it all rests on a simple philosophy: live well, live full, live out.

We dig into her early ventures that created access, not just income, and the moment she chose to set her own terms at work and in life. You’ll hear how MAPHA—her framework for motivating, preparing, and elevating women—grew from kitchen-table strategy to global stages, and why acronyms like CROP (Create, Rank, Optimise, Plan) help complex ideas travel and stick. The heartbeat of the conversation is her triad: Live Well (cultivate joy and reward), Live Full (align to purpose and values), Live Out (extend knowledge and opportunity). It’s practical, generous, and deeply human.

We also tackle AI with nuance. She uses it daily to synthesise and clarify, yet warns against outsourcing your core competence. We explore how to bookend AI with human thinking—start with your own ideas, refine with tools, finish with your judgment—so you protect cognition and keep your edge. As an academic champion for employability, she bridges research, industry, and classroom, embedding entrepreneurial learning and elevating Global South perspectives so innovation reflects more than one story.

If you’re craving a map for meaningful progress—one that blends process with purpose, and ambition with compassion—this conversation will give you frameworks you can use today. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a lift, and leave a review with the one idea you’ll live out this week.

Takeaways

• Nigerian roots, UK life, identity and values
• Engineering discipline shaping systems thinking
• First ventures built for access, not ego
• Redundancy to entrepreneurship on her own terms
• Mentoring over a thousand women for scale
• MAPHA: inner work, polish and readiness
• Acronyms that make strategy stick
• Practice meeting academia through MSc and PhD
• Live well, live full, live out philosophy
• Rewards, joy and sustainable motivation
• Community support and honest accountability
• AI’s role, limits and cognitive risks
• Guarding core competence while using tools
• Academic role embedding employability
• Global South perspectives in entrepreneurial learning

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Dr Do: Roots And Identity

• 2:45 Choosing Engineering And Finding Process

• 5:50 First Ventures And Teaching Instinct

• 9:45 Redundancy, Resolve, And A New Business

• 15:30 Scaling A Women-Led Enterprise

• 21:20 MAPHA: Motivate, Prepare, And Purpose

• 27:00 Practice Meets Academia

• 31:40 Live Well, Live Full, Live Out

• 38:20 Joy, Rewards, And Everyday Agency

• 43:20 Community, Support, And Smiles

• 46:30 The AI Question: Help Or Hindrance

• 53:40 Guarding Core Competence In A Tech Age

• 59:40 Using AI Wisely And Well

Keywords

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