Senaya_Asfaw
Senaya Asfaw
My Business Training
Ezissi Adaobi
About Ezissi Adaobi
Ezissi Adaobi, fondly known as Dobbiyzzs, is a passionate caterer and baker based in Bauchi State, Nigeria. She is committed to culinary excellence and community service, and dreams of launching a catering business that reflects the warmth of Nigerian hospitality with professional-quality service.
Her goal is to create a unique destination offering cakes, snacks, assorted dishes, and drinks inspired by the rich flavors of Eastern and Northern Nigeria.
For Ezissi, the business is more than a career. It is a way to empower others, share skills, and uplift her community through food and meaningful connections
Ezissi Adaobi
Business Goals
At the heart of Dobbiyzzs Signature are resilience, creativity, culture, and service. Ezissi’s business is not just about food but uplifting her community others and celebrating heritage.
Her vision is to build a respected brand known across Nigeria for its delicious offerings, community impact, and cultural preservation.
Ezissi envisions her shop in Dass Park, Bauchi, featuring warm decor inspired by Igbo and Hausa cultures, a clear professional signboard, and a welcoming atmosphere where customers can enjoy a variety of cakes, meals, and snacks served with care. She also aims to cater events, including family celebrations and special occasions.
Ezissi Adaobi
Obstacles
Over five years, Ezissi has developed strong baking and food presentation skills. She learned doughnuts, meat pies, and snacks from her mother, trained in cake decoration and beverages with her aunt, and honed advanced cake design and catering skills at Almond Smile Catering Company.
Ezissi’s biggest challenge has been the lack of capital to rent a shop and buy essential equipment like a deck oven, generator, and freezer. Working from home limits her space and capacity, slowing growth.
Balancing business demands with family responsibilities adds further strain. Despite these obstacles, her determination to achieve her dream remains unwavering and strong.
Ezissi Adaobi
Our Partnership
Ezissi is seeking mentorship, funding, and business development support from Leadership Initiatives to help with equipment procurement, customer relations training, digital marketing, bookkeeping, and brand development.
Her dream is to become one of the leading caterers in Northern and Eastern Nigeria. She wants to build a home for her family, purchase a car for school runs, and send her children to the best schools.
Additionally, she hopes to create job opportunities by training young people and empower her younger brother to start his own business. She hopes to serve as an inspiration for those around her.
My Grant Proposal Presentation
As part of the International Leadership and Business Internship, I collaborated with top development experts to help grow and strengthen my business partner’s infrastructure.
At the end of the program, my team presented our final proposal to a panel of judges from the Leadership Initiatives Grant Committee. This formal pitch allowed us to apply our entrepreneurial skills, showcase our strategic plan, and advocate for meaningful change in our partner’s business.
Our team was awarded a grant that will fund the implementation of our business partner’s plan, providing life-changing support that will expand operations, improve financial stability, and create new growth opportunities. Over the next year, this grant will help transform the future of their business and improve the quality of life for both the entrepreneur and their community.
My Grant Proposal
Throughout the program, we worked closely with Ezissi Adaobi to gain a clear understanding of their business goals. Though Ezissi has leveraged their skills and years of experience to create their business, they face obstacles hindering the expansion of their work.
Guided by their vision, we crafted a proposal detailing the infrastructure materials that would support the growth of their business. We devised a plan that would allow Ezissi to optimize their business through a new budget and financial tracking system.
This new budget enables Ezissi to allocate funds toward essential materials and equipment, supporting the optimization of their services. Effective financial tracking will be crucial for managing growing profits and preserving assets, ensuring the business’s long-term growth and stability.
Internship Highlights
Our business development journey began with a one-on-one Zoom meeting with our partner, Ezissi Adaobi, and our Nigerian project coordinator. This initial conversation laid the foundation for strong collaboration and helped us better understand Ezissi’s background, family, goals for the business, and the specific challenges they were facing.
Hearing directly from Ezissi gave us the insight we needed to begin brainstorming practical, personalized solutions. Each morning, our team held focused discussions to refine our ideas, reflect on expert advice from the day before, and adjust our timeline to move our plans forward efficiently.
Throughout the process, on-staff project coordinators and business development experts guided us, helping us ask the right questions and turn our ideas into meaningful, actionable strategies.
I had the unique opportunity to visit the Swiss Embassy, where I gained insight into the role of diplomacy in fostering strong relationships between Switzerland and the United States.
The embassy functions as a center for international collaboration, working with partner countries and global organizations to address pressing issues such as poverty, gender inequality, and climate change. Through this visit, I learned how diplomats engage in meaningful dialogue and policy development to create sustainable, people-focused solutions.
Officials from the Swiss Embassy shared how they partner with local communities to identify needs and implement programs that empower individuals and strengthen long-term development. This commitment to community-driven impact inspired my team and me as we worked to develop our own business proposal focused on creating lasting change."
Throughout the internship, our team had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with top experts in business and economic development from Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
One of the highlights was a session with Gerald Gangaram, a decorated Apache helicopter pilot & leadership expert. He gave us a crash course in leadership and decision making, breaking down the key elements of what makes an effective leader. His insights helped us think bigger and more strategically about how to position our partner’s business for success.
With support from Mr. Gangaram and other global leaders, we sharpened our ideas, refined our strategy, and built a powerful pitch deck to present at the end of the week.
To further enhance our presentation and proposal, our team had the unique opportunity to partner with a business and development mentor with immense experience in the fields of finance, development, business management, and more.
With support from our mentor, we were able to craft key questions for our business partners that enabled us to design an effective SWOT analysis that guided our work throughout the week. Following the completion of the SWOT analysis, our mentor worked alongside us to hone our ideas and proposal recommendations that would provide funding and new marketing materials for our partner.
At the end of the week, our mentor supported our slide deck design and gave us instrumental feedback as we practiced pitching our ideas and proposals. This feedback directly contributed to our receiving support from the Leadership Initiatives’ Board of Directors and Guest Judges to implement our microgrant and marketing designs.