Kemi Omololu-Olunloyo

Kemi Omololu-Olunloyo (born Olukemi Ajoke Olabisi Omololu-Olunloyo on August 6th 1963) is a Nigerian born, US educated Broadcast Journalist, Certified Publicist, Registered U.S Pharmacist in 3 states and a former teen fashion model. She is the second born daughter of political icon, State Governor and Mathematician of the African Diaspora Victor Omololu Olunloyo and former Oyo State of Nigeria First Lady Olufunlayo Akinyemi. A former resident of Toronto, she currently lives in the Ottawa region of Canada and practices all three of her professions. She is the Founder of Keminications Media and Public Relations, a blog network and online Public Relations service.

Early life
Kemi grew up in the largest city in West Africa, her hometown of Ibadan, Nigeria. The second out of eight children, attended the Ogunlesi nursery school and All Saints school, Jericho, Ibadan for her preschool education. She later attended elementary school at Staff School and Abadina School in the University of Ibadan campus where here father was a senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematics. She later attended Junior high school at St Teresa's Catholic girls College in Ibadan followed by Senior High school at the Federal School of Arts and Science, Lagos, Nigeria. Prior to that at 14-years-old, she suffered serious head injuries in an accident in 1978 which also left her then 8-year-old brother Akintayo a quadraplegic. She later went to the City of Oxford, England and attended an elite pre-college prep school Modes Study Center. Omololu-Olunloyo later went on to college in the United States in 1982 and attended North America's first pharmacy school, The Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science. After graduating in 1988, she later graduated in 1996 from Goucher College School of Public Relations in Baltimore, Maryland and also the Broadcasting Institute of Maryland in Baltimore as a News Major.
Pharmacy Career
Kemi attended the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, now known as USP University of Sciences, Philadelphia USA. She worked in the area of community and retail Pharmacy and became one of the CVS Procare Pharmacists. CVS is the largest drug store in the United States. She created a solo volunteer project called The Caring Pharmacist Drug Education Link where she visited schools on her day off to speak to students about the perils of drug abuse. The program garnered praise from the Baltimore City School system that it was incorporated into the curriculum in 1997. Kemi later teamed up with Urban station V103-FM Baltimore air personalities to encourage young teens to stay positive. They visited several schools in the process and named the ensuing program as "The Pharmacist and the DJ's." She later developed a program to help African-American Women diagnosed with HIV/AIDS to get the best service the company offered and won a $500 grant from CVS for the Baltimore Mental Health Alliance. Kemi also developed a program for women addicted to drugs in pregnancy at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center and the "MAP" program was launched standing for "Mending Addiction and Pregnancy." As a devoted Pharmacist in the community, she won the Johnson and Johnson "My Favourite Pharmacist" contest in 1998 where the customers of CVS write and essay about a pharmacist. She is a licensed pharmacist in Maryland, Georgia and Pennsylvania. She is currently pharmacy in a limited capacity in Ontario, Canada.
Public Relations Career
Graduating from Goucher College Maryland's School of Public Relations, one of her teachers described her saying "Kemi's final project reflected creative thinking and a clear feasibility of event planning and crisis management. She has an upbeat positive attitude--an asset to any undertaking."....Mary Ann Knabb, VP of Public Relations, Image Dynamics, Baltimore, MD. (1996) She started her own PR agency online helping clients in both volunteer and paid capacity. Most of her volunteering relates to her crime advocacy in Toronto Canada helping families of crime victims make appeals to get murders solved. Kemi was also known in the media as the Publicist for the Chukwu Octuplets and their parents after the birth of the Suleman Octuplets on January 26th 2009. Having known the Chukwu Octuplets since birth, their parents Nkem and Iyke hired her to handle all their overwhelming media appearances. Nkem Chukwu thanked Kemi live on national TV on the Today show for all their media tours. Omololu-Olunloyo also booked them on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, Larry King Live, The Associated Press TV,The Mo'Nique radio show, KHOU-TV Houston, BBC Networks, SKY News, Good Morning America, CNN Radio and several more media outlets. She was also instrumental in getting the vote out for Toronto radio news personality Rudy Blair of 680 News during his competition in the Media Idol contest during the 2008 Canadian Idol season and also Canadian Rapper Classified on his winning the East Coast Music awards.. Kemi said she always believed in Classified's talent and constantly promoted him on her music blog HipHossip. He later went to win a Much Music Video award in 2009. Omololu-Olunloyo was also the brains behind Milwaukee R&B artist Timothy Campbell's successful album release campaign in 2009 with appearances on 98.3FM Milwaukee, Fox 6 TV and the entertainment cover of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.. She has done several other PR campaigns with expertise in Crisis Management and Media Training.
Journalism and Broadcasting career
Kemi attended the Broadcasting Institute of Maryland in Baltimore 2002 and graduated as a news major. She interned at WBAL-Radio AM 1090 and TV an NBC affiliate in Baltimore, Maryland and went on to become a Freelance news Journalist in Atlanta, Georgia working and doing media documentaries about WSB Radio and TV, CBS-46 Atlanta and was a very active member of the National Academy of Arts and Science (EMMYS) as well as the Hollywood Foreign Press (Golden Globes) She worked part time as an anchor, reporter on TV, Radio, traffic news, print media and internet websites. It was then she founded Keminications Media Gossip blog which was praised by the Atlanta media. Later she developed more blogs and turned Keminications into a blog network.. One of those blogs was HipHossip.com known as canada's leading music blog which was endorsed by American music network VH1 who asked her for a blogroll link.. The same was extended from BET Black Entertainment Television's website who described HipHossip as Canada's leading Hip-Hop site on the mouse scroll.. Featured as one of the first mainstream bloggers in the United States in a 2005 financial article, Atlanta Woman magazine described her as knowing her "Pharmamedia" referring to her Journalism and Pharmacy career.. Kemi left the United States after almost 30 years and returned to Nigeria where she worked for Radio Nigeria as a Talk Show Host, Reporter and DJ in 2006. Her most recent media job was in 2008 as a freelance news writer at Global Television Network Ontario in Toronto.
Anti-Crime Advocacy in Toronto,Canada
Omololu-Olunloyo who became an anti-crime advocate in 2008 used her PR knowledge to create what she called "The Crime Victims Press Conferences." She was interviewed by CBC Radio's highly acclaimed morning show about it in October 2008 after the death of a young 18-year-old man William Junior Appiah who was gunned down while playing basketball in Toronto's troubled Jane and Finch area. Appiah's killers were seen on tape arriving at the court and then shooting him and running away to a nearby car. What Omololu-Olunloyo did was to contact the families and asked them if they wanted to make a public appeal in the media on finding who killed their loved ones. This phenomenom in Toronto was unheard of. "We need more Kemis in this world, We really do." Constable Scott Mills the youth officer for Toronto Crime Stoppers told the media citing what she is doing is a good thing. Omololu-Olunloyo has helped Mills gather so many family appeal videos on the Toronto Police's YouTube channel..She said she wants more people to have faith in the system and police and use Crime Stoppers more.
Later, the Toronto Sun reported her as urging people in the black community to start trusting police, the Crime Stoppers utility and that tip callers were protected by the Supreme Court of Canada.. Olunloyo would hence build memorial sites online for these families and constantly update the sites with pictures and videos to jog people's memories in solving the numerous murders in Toronto. . It was then she caught the attention of Constable Scott Mills the Youth Officer for Toronto Crime Stoppers. Mills and Olunloyo met at the 25th anniversary of Crime Stoppers in January 2009 where she was representing the Appiah family on behalf of the late 18-year-old William Junior Appiah. She later teamed up with Constable Mills inviting him to get family appeal footage at these outdoor memorial site news conferences. The Toronto media were in full presence at these media conferences Omololu-Olunloyo hosted..
On December 29th 2009, Omololu-Olunloyo held a birthday vigil for a murdered 18-year-old Toronto young man Jarvis St Remy on what would have been his 19th birthday. St Remy was shot and killed at a bus stop while waiting to go home on his regular curfew. His mother Clemee Joseph was approached by Omololu-Olunloyo on May 3rd 2009 two days after the murder encouraging her to have a news conference and appeal to the public in finding Jarvis' killers. According to Toronto police, St Remy had no criminal record, drug or gang affiliations and his murder could possibly be a mistaken identity killing. The news conference was held on the 6th of May with Toronto police Detective Mike Carbone speaking as well at the news conference. What was one news conference would become a Summer 2009 monthly news conference for the family of St Remy. His father Giles St Remy who flew in from St Lucia for his son's funeral made an appeal at one of the news conferences as well.
Later in August 2009, the youngest homicide victim in Toronto 14-year-old Adrian Johnston's family sought an appeal news conference for their loved one. Omololu-Olunloyo had earlier taken it upon herself to help send press releases to the media to attend his viewing and funeral at the request of Adrian's maternal aunt. She also contacted authorities and media in Welland, Ontario to warn them of heavy traffic and providing security the day after Victoria Day that a high profile funeral would be happening in their town. She stated to the Toronto Star that even though she read in the Globe and Mail that Adrian was linked to gangs,everything was alleged speculations and she wanted Adrian to rest in peace even though some gang-like dressed male teens showed up at his viewing and seemed to intimidate visitors. They lined up in front of the funeral home prompting the funeral home to lock the front doors and visitors using the side door. Police was later seen parked on both ends of the street. Adrian Johnston's murder was specifically stated by Detective Brian Borg of the Toronto police as one that was a mystery and there was no indication that Adrian Johnston was involved in gangs or the drug trade. Johnston met with a young man in a hydro field at about 5pm after school on Monday May 11th 2009 and the person shot him to death was seen running away from the scene by witnesses who described him as wearing a green bandana. Omololu-Olunloyo held a birthday news conference for Adrian's mother Stephanie Johnston and her family on August 14th 2009 on what would have been Adrian's 15th birthday. At Johnston's birthday press conference, Omololu-Olunloyo bought all the families she has spoken out for together and coined the phrase "shoot and run" murders in Toronto pleading to outgoing Mayor David Miller to help. Both St Remy and Johnston's murders have not yet been solved.
On the 29th of December 2009 right after the St Remy birthday vigil news conference, another high profile murder of a Wal-Mart store manager occurred later that evening and made all the Toronto news casts.The victim was 29-year-old Kenneth Mark and was shot execution style with a single bullet to the back of the head. Mark was a community advocate who chased gangs and gun toting teens away from his community. He had become a community police liason partnering with the local police precinct in fostering a better community. After reading about Mark, Omololu-Olunloyo described him as a "HERO" and compassionate humanitarian. She was interviewed by Canada's national daily, The National Post and told Reporter Megan O'Toole that the case was evidence of a systemic failure. "A community liaison is not somebody that should get killed." Mark was killed 12 days after two teens were acquitted of shooting him in 2008 with a pellet gun after he shielded a mother and son whom a gun was pointed at. Mark testified against both teens and the Judge dismissed the case because of lack of enough evidence. Omololu-Olunloyo built a Facebook memorial page for Mark who she never even knew and wanted people to leave tributes and also dialogue on this ongoing problem of teens and guns in Toronto.
In this process, she met some family members of Kenneth Mark who she reached out to. She encouraged the Mark family to attend the Crime Stoppers launch on January 5th 2010 and take a photo of Mark with them. Kemi sent press releases to the local media who spoke to Shawn Mark at the mini news conference at police headquarters. Appeals work when witnesses come forward Omololu-Olunloyo said to the Mark family. In a stunning development, On the 14th of January 2010, Detective Hank Idsinga of Toronto Police homicide announced the arrest of 19-year-old Lamar Skeete and a 16-year-old who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Act of Canada. Both were arrested without incident in Toronto. The next day there was a third arrest of another 16-year-old in Ottawa. One of Mark's sister sent an e-mail to Omololu-Olunloyo thanking her on behalf of the family on all her efforts in remembering their brother. Olunloyo also held an appeal press conference for the family of Jahmelle Ajamu Grant and the Appiah families in September 2009.
Awards and Honors
Omololu-Olunloyo was a multi-award winning volunteer in Owings Mills, Maryland where she spent a bulk of her young adult life. Olunloyo was named one of Maryland's Most Beautiful People in the annual state volunteer awards by then Governor Parris Glendening and then Baltimore County Executive Dutch Ruppersberger. Her volunteer work in drug abuse and mentoring teenagers earned her praise from the Baltimore City school system, several schools, community groups, Greater Baltimore Medical Center addiction clinics as well as CVS Pharmacy, her pharmacy employer of 15 years in 3 states. Several U.S politicians such as Former NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, Former Senator Barbara Mikulski, U.S Congressman Elijah Cummings and former President Bill Clinton also commended her work in drug abuse prevention. .
She produced a video in 1997 called "Yes! You can raise that child drug-free" featured in several newspapers like the Owings Mills Times, Baltimore Times and the Afro-American newspapers. Several local and national newscasts also interviewed her live. On WJZ-TV, Baltimore and PBS, she said she was "fed up of seeing 12 year olds gunned down daily as drug couriers and there can be a better life for these children by mentoring them." Olunloyo was also named as the winner of a grant from CVS Corporation to help fund an AIDS program for newly infected women in Baltimore. Many that sought her services at the CVS Procare Pharmacy in the Govans area of Baltimore hence nicknamed her "The HIV Lady." An article was featured in a 1996 edition of CVS Express, the company's corporate magazine.
Selected Media Appearances
During the Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab alleged terror incident on Christmas day 2009, no Nigerian government official came out to publicly speak on camera to the Western media about the terror attempt. As a former Radio Nigeria Journalist and host Omololu-Olunloyo
appeared on several US and Canadian cable news channels including CNN, FOX News, CTV News Channel and CFRB 1010 News Radio in Toronto offering the Nigerian perspective of the situation. She described the father of the suspect as a HERO and a very community caring man who lead Nigeria's oldest bank First Bank of Nigeria. On a special edition of CNN's Larry King Live on December 27th 2009, she spoke about the fact that Nigeria is a good country made up of good people even though Nigeria has been known for some negative things like bad leadership, persecution, drug trafficking, massive internet fraud and even human trafficking, and now the Umar Mutallab story has allegedly now made things worse for the country's image as it turns 50 this year.
Omololu-Olunloyo later told CNN's Randi Kaye on CNN's breakfast show American Morning the next day December 28th 2009 that even though she had spoken to a member of the suspect's family on condition of anonymity, the family was quite distraught and were planning to release a statement which they eventually did.
She also stated that what the elder Mutallab did by alerting the US Embassy was "unheard of" and that US Homeland Security missed a big clue. Omololu-Olunloyo later told Kaye on the show about the problem of religious extremism, persecution and radical behavior in Nigeria quoting "We have a lot of problems in Nigeria. Many Nigerians accept these problems and some don't want to accept it. We have a problem of extremism and radical behavior in Nigeria, particularly in the north. "No one is saying that Muslims are the only ones that are radical, but we have to really face the truth. I mean, this kind of behavior has cost so much in Nigeria. The Miss World pageant they had to move that because of all this fighting and radical behavior"At the end of the interview, Omololu-Olunloyo appealed to United States Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano to "dig deeper" as she felt the system did not work, something Napolitano stated earlier with respect to the system having worked. Napolitano backtracked that statement later in the day by appearing on CNN and several media outlets stating that the system in fact failed. It was later reported by several media organizations
Meanwhile on the afternoon of December 27th 2009, the leading Canadian news cable channel CTV News Channel Canada (formerly CTV NewsNet) spoke to Omololu-Olunloyo in a live phone interview where she stated that after speaking to the same anonymous family source, she learned about the terror suspect's travels from London to Egypt then on to Dubai and Yemen and was never heard from again. Omololu-Olunloyo said she personally did not believe that he was allegedly radicalized in the United States. She also stated that her sentiments was shared by the Nigerian print media who printed headlines such as "shameful kid" "shame to the country" and several other derogatory headlines.
On America's FOX News Channel on the morning on December 27th 2009, Omololu-Olunloyo was asked by Eric Shawn of FNC show "American News Headquarters" if one would compare the Mutallab family to the Rockefellers? She compared the Mutallab family to the Kennedys, America's renowned political family. She specifically made the comparison based on being affluent, tight knit, community caring and stating that terror suspect Umar Mutallab had now allegedly become an outcast after disowning his own family before heading to Yemen and allegedly trying to blow up an airline. Omololu-Olunloyo stated that the terror suspect in the eyes of many Nigerians around the globe had bought shame on his family and the country. She appealed to Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano to exersice patience on the arrival of the CIA in the northern Nigerian province of Katsina who were there to begin investigations and to please avoid tension among the locals. Omololu-Olunloyo also appeared on other FOX news shows including Greta Van Susteren's show on the evening of December 26th 2009.
Omololu-Olunloyo did several more media interviews drawing criticism from a few Nigerian Muslims and praises from mostly Nigerian Christians signifying the still ongoing division between both ethnic groups. Most felt they were informed and damage control was done since no top officials from Nigeria came out on these international cable shows. In one of her interviews, she mentioned a letter she wrote TIME magazine in 1998 warning of international terrorist cells in Africa after the Kenya and Tanzania bombing. The Nigerian Embassy in Dar-es-Salaam was severely damaged by shrapneau in that attack as it was next to the US embassy. This letter was written to TIME in 1998 three years before 911.

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