Celebrating Funke Osae-Brown, a woman on a mission to conquer the world and one of the top online publishers making waves in Nigeria

I first met Funke Osae-Brown in London three weeks ago at a training organised by FBN Holding for online publishers and media executives...

I first met Funke Osae-Brown in London three weeks ago at a training organised by FBN Holding for online publishers and media executives which I facilitated as the Main Trainer/Resource Person. I was struck by her zeal to succeed and her intelligence.

She is one of the early pioneers of luxury reporting in Nigeria through her online platform, The Luxury Reporter, www.luxuryreporter.ng and her monthly e-magazine, TLR, which is available for download on her website and Issuu.

In the course of reporting lifestyle, arts and travel for more than a decade, she discovered that there is really no online platform that focuses on reporting exclusively on the local and global luxury market in Nigeria. She saw a need in this area and decided to step in.
Her focus is simple, to report exclusively on Nigerian and global luxury market. She provides information on latest trends in the luxury industry for the discerning man and woman with taste for rare quality.

Her website is now known as the Go-To website for information on trends shaping the luxury industry. She also promotes local luxury brands on her platform.

The Luxury Reporter App is available for download on Playstore and Appzoom for android phones. Just search for The Luxury Reporter or TLR on Google Playstore to download the App. Blackberry and IOS for iPhone will be available soon. She is on BBM Channel C004B38D7 and she sends out newsletters three times a week to a large data base of exclusive readers.

She has been a trail blazer in her 14-year career in journalism. She started her journalism with the defunct New Age newspaper as a small business reporter before she moved to Business Day as an arts correspondent. While at Business Day she moved quickly up the corporate ladder as she was promoted to the post of an assistant editor within two years of joining the organisation. Her petite frame will not hold her down neither would her sex. She rose to become the editor of Business Life Magazine, Business Day’s premier weekend magazine and later deputy Sunday editor, a role she combined with editing Business Life and Business Day’s Friday OFF DUTY.

Her style of writing is unique. Her writing cuts across different aspects of arts and culture including writing book and film reviews, doing a critic of visual arts and stage drama. She has written several award winning stories one of the prominent ones is: ‘The aesthetics in the craft of the Afingba’, ‘Timeless value of Adire’. She has also written many exclusive front page stories on the arts especially the business of visual art highlighting the record sales made by Nigerian art works at local and international auctions.

In addition, she is a travel journalist who has travelled to countries like South Africa, Ghana, Gambia, London, Paris, Amsterdam, United States among others. Her versatility has seen her also writing on social issues in her then weekend column, ‘Starters’.

She was once the editor of the famous youth magazine in Nigeria called ‘NaijaTimes’ and was a freelance correspondent for the African Review owned by The Nation Media Group in Kenya. She contributed to Essence Magazine, South Africa and South Africa In-flight magazine, Sawubona.

She was nominated in three categories of the Nigerian Media Merit Awards. She was also a 2013 finalist at the Diageo Business Reporting Awards in the Best Business News category with the story she did titled: ‘Growing art auction business fetches N232m in 2012’. She also won award for Best Arts and Culture Reporting 2013 at the Annual Mother Drum Golden Awards organised by Mother Drum Foundation. She was the Future Awards Journalist of the Year, 2009.

After her Masters’ degree at the University of Lagos, she attended the prestigious Lagos Business School (LBS). She has attended trainings outside Nigeria. Some of them are: Reporting regional integration in West Africa organised by Inwent, Germany. It took place in Accra Ghana, Ethics in journalism organised by Inwent, Germany. She was also in The Netherlands for a six-week course on Internet for journalist at the Radio Nederlands Training Centre, Bussum, Holland; a training on Advance Journalism, and Thought Leadership, UK sponsored by FirstBank of Nigeria Plc.

With her online luxury magazine that has more than 6 million hits, I have no doubt that Funke Osae-Brown is set to take over the world!!!