Zuriel
Oduwole

Zuriel Oduwole, at just 15 years old, met with Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi to advocate against child marriage. Fifteen months later, Mozambique formally outlawed the decades-old practice—immediately brightening the futures of more than 1 million girls. A global education advocate, presidential advisor, and filmmaker who got her start age the tender age of nine, Zuriel is all about creating tangible impact.

Currently nominated for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, Zuriel is renowned for her girls’ education advocacy, peace mitigation, and social development work across the globe. On stage, she delivers a powerful message about the impact of a single voice and inspires audiences to use theirs to make the world a better place.

Dream up. Speak up. Stand up. The central mission of Zuriel’s advocacy work is to empower young girls to dream bigger, speak up for themselves, and stand up for what they believe in. With this goal, at age 13, she co-founded the DUSUSU Foundation. A decade later, her unwavering message on behalf of girls’ education has reached over 2 million people in dozens of countries. Through the foundation’s filmmaking workshops, Zuriel has equipped hundreds of students, out-of-school youth, and unemployed women with work-ready skills they can use to support themselves and their families, and introduced a medium through which they can share their stories and amplify their voices.

But it is her influence over world leaders that has had the greatest impact. Since age 10, Zuriel has met one-on-one with over 36 presidents and prime ministers to address global social development challenges. Standing before them as a living testament to what a young girl is capable of when given education, access, and opportunity, she shifts perceptions in ways that influence policy throughout the country.

An influential advisor who understands the effect of wars on girls and women, Zuriel serves as a peace envoy, mediating between conflicting countries at every opportunity. She met with President David Granger of Guyana about their impending conflict with Venezuela at the UN at the age of 13. Four years later, she sat down with President Abdel Fattah El Sisi in Egypt, during the Arab blockade of Qatar, that peacefully ended in 2021.

Profiled in Forbes at age 10, named one of 33 women who’ve changed the world by ELLE at age 12, and deemed the world’s most powerful girl by then Secretary of State John Kerry at age 14, Zuriel is consistently recognized for her advocacy work. In 2022, she received the Ban Ki-Moon Young Leaders Award celebrating her decade of measurable impact around the world.

Now in her early 20s, and already with more accomplishments than many achieve in a lifetime, Zuriel is just getting started. She sees girls’ education as the stone that starts the ripple effect toward a better world—for when girls are given the same opportunities as boys, there are twice as many brilliant minds contributing to our shared future, and society’s problems become easier to solve.