Temi Oyewunmi
University of Virginia, Darden School of Business
Age: 38 years old
“Human-centered, forward-thinking leader who loves people, builds boldly, and creates lasting impact with kindness.”
Hometown: Leesburg, Virginia
Family Members: Toba Oyewunmi (Spouse), Tal Oyewunmi and Ted Oyewunmi (Children)
Fun fact about yourself: I collect wisdom the way some people collect souvenirs, and I am building an intergenerational storytelling platform to help preserve the lessons, stories, and values that shape people, families, communities, and institutions.
Undergraduate School and Degree:
University of Houston, Texas – Master of Science (M.S.) in Mechanical (Subsea) Engineering, 2016
Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria – Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Mechanical Engineering, 2011
Where are you currently working? Airbus – Director, Digital Global Products, Corporate Services
In my current role, I lead digital product strategy and business partnerships for a broad Corporate Services portfolio that includes Facilities Management and Real Estate, Physical Security, Corporate Security, Legal, Communications, Product Safety, Sustainability, Archiving, and related enterprise services. My work sits at the intersection of business requirements, product leadership, stakeholder management, digital transformation, and operational execution across complex global functions.
Extracurricular Activities, Community Work and Leadership Roles: During my time at Darden, I have been engaged in the Executive MBA community through coursework, residencies, leadership discussions, class participation, and peer learning. I serve as an EMBA Ambassador, where I mentor early- and mid-career professionals affiliated with Darden and support others as they explore their own leadership development and graduate business education journeys. I was also inducted into The Raven Society, the oldest and one of the most prestigious honor societies at the University of Virginia, recognizing scholarship, leadership, and service.
Professionally, I lead enterprise digital products at Airbus and recently expanded into a broader transverse leadership role across the Corporate Services Product Service Line. I also mentor colleagues at Airbus and hold several professional credentials that shape how I lead complex transformation work, including PMP, PMI-ACP, SAFe, Pragmatic Product Management, Prosci Change Management, and ITIL.
Outside of work and school, I am developing a long-term platform and business vision focused on intergenerational storytelling, wisdom preservation, leadership, and human impact. This work reflects my broader commitment to building systems, communities, and platforms that create value beyond the present moment.
Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? The academic achievement I am most proud of is the depth of my work in Leading Strategic Change elective, especially my Airbus transformation analysis. That project mattered to me because it forced me to look carefully at a real organization, one I know from the inside, and examine what it takes for a large, complex, highly-regulated, engineering-driven enterprise to become more adaptive without losing the rigor that makes it strong.
I was proud that the work moved beyond surface-level recommendations, as it required me to think about strategy, culture, operating systems, leadership alignment, stakeholder dynamics, organizational friction, and the difference between having a good vision and actually mobilizing people around it. Being nominated by my professor to present part of that work in class was especially meaningful because it affirmed that I was not only learning the frameworks, but also applying them in a thoughtful, practical, and leadership-oriented way.
For me, that is what the Darden experience has been about; learning how to think more rigorously, speak more clearly, lead more courageously, and connect academic insight to real world responsibility.
What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? One of the professional achievements I am most proud of is leading the transformation of the employee Onboarding and Offboarding digital program at Airbus. When I was entrusted with the work, it was a complex and highly visible challenge that had been difficult to solve. The employee onboarding experience touches many parts of the business. This includes IT for hardware, software, and access management, HR, Facilities, Security, Export Control, Finance, Procurement and supplier and trusted partner coordination to ensure employee readiness. Because of that, the work required more than technical delivery. It required structure, trust, cross-functional alignment, the digitization of complex processes and workflows, and the ability to bring different teams together around a shared outcome.
Through that effort, the program evolved into a more comprehensive and scalable solution that became a model of success in North America and was later adapted by Airbus in Europe. That global impact was especially meaningful to me because it showed that the work was not just solving a local problem. It was creating a repeatable foundation that could improve the employee experience across the enterprise. It also led to my nomination as the first Airbus Digital Global Product Manager based in the United States, which was a major milestone in my career.
I am proud of this achievement because it reflects the kind of leader I have worked hard to become, someone who can take a difficult, ambiguous problem, bring the right people together, create momentum, and turn complexity into meaningful business value. That experience helped prepare me for the broader leadership responsibility I now carry in the Digital Corporate Services Product Service Line, where I lead digital products across critical enterprise functions that support the operational backbone of Airbus.
Who was your favorite MBA professor? This is a difficult choice because I genuinely appreciated many of my professors, but my favorite MBA professor was Professor Michael Ho. In addition to having one of the best senses of humor at Darden, he is deeply human, brilliant, engaging, and incredibly gifted at making difficult material feel accessible and relevant.
I came to business school with an engineering background and a career in technology, and one of my goals was to deepen my business acumen in areas where I had not previously had as much formal exposure. Professor Ho played a meaningful role in that growth. He taught three of the most valuable courses I took during the program: Financial Management and Policies Part II, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Corporate Financial Strategies.
Those courses were challenging, but they also became some of the most enjoyable and useful parts of my MBA experience. Professor Ho helped me see finance not as an abstract technical discipline, but as a practical leadership language. Through his classes, I gained stronger tools for evaluating business decisions, understanding value creation, thinking through capital allocation, assessing corporate strategy, and connecting financial choices to long-term organizational outcomes.
What I appreciated most was that he made rigorous subjects feel human, thoughtful, and applicable. His courses gave me a stronger foundation that I will continue to build on throughout my professional journey, especially as I grow into broader leadership roles where strategic, financial, and operational decisions increasingly intersect.
Why did you choose this school’s executive MBA program? I chose Darden because I was at a point in my career where I did not just want another credential. I wanted a program that would stretch how I think, how I lead, and how I make decisions in complex environments. Coming from a more technical background, I wanted to strengthen my business acumen beyond theory through a learning experience that would force me to engage, debate, reflect, and grow. I also wanted to be surrounded by exceptional classmates who were smart, accomplished, thoughtful, driven, and operating across different industries, leadership contexts, and life experiences. In short, I wanted the kind of peer environment that would make the overall experience richer.
Darden’s case method was a major part of that decision. I wanted a classroom experience where I could not simply sit quietly in the background and absorb information passively. The case method requires you to prepare, form a point of view, speak with clarity, listen with humility, and be willing to have your assumptions challenged. That felt very aligned with the kind of leader I was trying to become—someone who could think with more clarity, communicate courageously, and make better decisions even when there is no perfect answer.
The Executive MBA format also mattered because I needed a program that fit the reality of my life without requiring me to step away from my career, family, or responsibilities. Darden gave me the opportunity to keep growing professionally while learning in real time, and its proximity to my workplace and home made the commitment more manageable. What made the experience especially valuable was that I could take what I was learning in class and apply it almost immediately at work. That connection between academic rigor and real leadership application is one of the reasons Darden was the right choice for me.
What is the biggest lesson you gained during your MBA and how did you apply it at work? The biggest lesson I gained during my MBA is that leadership is not just about being smart, working hard, or having the right answer. It is about creating the conditions for the right work to happen through people, systems, trust, clarity, and alignment.
Before Darden, I already understood the importance of execution. Coming from an engineering background and working in technology, I have always valued structure, problem-solving, delivery, and accountability. But the MBA helped me see that many organizational challenges are not caused by a lack of intelligence, effort, or good intentions. Many times, they are caused by misalignment across priorities, incentives, communication, definitions of success, and cultures that unintentionally slow down the very change they are trying to create.
I have applied that lesson directly in my role at Airbus, especially as I have taken on the Corporate Services portfolio. With a broad set of stakeholders across several functions, the work cannot succeed through technical delivery alone. Each function has its own priorities, pressures, ways of working, risks, and expectations. My role requires me to translate across those differences, build trust, clarify what matters most, and connect digital product decisions to real business outcomes.
The MBA made me more intentional about how I lead across complexity. I now spend more time asking whether the right people are aligned, whether we are solving the right problem, and whether our operating model supports the behaviors we need. That shift has made me a stronger and more strategic leader because I am not only focused on moving work forward; I am also focused on making sure the work truly matters.
Give us a story during your time as an executive MBA on how you were able to juggle work, family and education? There were many weeks during the Executive MBA when I felt like I was living three full lives at once. I was leading demanding digital product work at Airbus, showing up for my family, and trying to give Darden the seriousness and excellence it deserved. Some days moved from stakeholder meetings to family responsibilities to late night case preparation, assignments, projects, and weeknight classes, with almost no transition time in between.
One of my busiest stretches captures that reality well. I worked a full week, then left for business workshops and global residency commitments in Europe. While in Hamburg, Germany, I attended workshops during the day and returned to my hotel at night to complete three final exams. As soon as that was done, I traveled to Munich to begin another weeklong global residency. Another time, after spending the week in Finland and Estonia, I traveled directly to Toulouse, France, for work and still attended Darden classes remotely, waking up around midnight because of the time difference. On other business trips to France, I woke up at 1:00 a.m. Central European Time for three consecutive days to attend class and complete project work with my colleagues. I could have excused myself, but I could not bring myself to do that.
That was the reality of the program for me. It was not always graceful, and it was certainly not easy, but it taught me that balance is not always about giving everything equal time. Sometimes balance means being fully present where you are needed most, then having the discipline to return to the next responsibility with focus and humility. I would spend the day managing priorities at work, aligning with stakeholders, and moving product conversations forward. In the evening, I would shift into family mode, then after the house was quieter, I would return to schoolwork, readings, team deliverables, and reflection papers.
I did not complete the EMBA alone. My family carried part of the journey with me, and my husband carried a great deal of the weight at home throughout the entire program. He took on so much of what I could not always hold in the same way while I was balancing work, travel, school, and motherhood. After work, I would drop my backpack in my home office, open my school laptop, start reading right away, eat while I read, stay up late, drag myself upstairs to clean up for the day, and then repeat the cycle again. My children still needed me to be present, not just ambitious, and that kept me grounded. Sometimes I simply had to pause, put the work aside, and be their mother.
The experience taught me endurance, prioritization, and purpose. It also made the achievement more meaningful because it was not just something I earned for myself. It was something my family and I lived through together.
What advice would you give to a student looking to enter an executive MBA program? I would tell them to be very clear about why they are doing it. An Executive MBA is too demanding to pursue casually. It will stretch your time, your energy, your relationships, your confidence, and sometimes even your sense of identity. But when you approach it with a clear purpose, it can become one of the most transformational experiences of your life.
I would also tell them not to treat the program like a checklist of classes. The real value is in the content, but it is also in the reflection, the relationships, the conversations, and the way the experience changes how you see yourself as a leader. Come prepared to contribute honestly, listen to your classmates, build real relationships, and allow the cases to challenge your assumptions. At the same time, do not wait until graduation to apply what you are learning. Make use of the program in real time. Bring the lessons back to your work, your leadership, your decisions, and even your personal life.
Most importantly, do not wait for life to become calm before you pursue growth. I waited and hoped for years for the perfect season when life would finally be convenient, but that time never came. Eventually, I decided to attend business school anyway, even with a demanding career, family responsibilities, and a full life already in motion. Life may never be perfectly calm for you either. The real question is whether the program aligns with the person you are trying to become.
What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? One way AI became part of my MBA experience was through the broader recognition that today’s leaders cannot afford to engage with emerging technology fearfully or passively. AI was presented as more than a business tool. It became a way to examine how leaders make decisions, use technology responsibly, and prepare organizations for change. For me, that raised practical questions: How do we use AI to strengthen our work without outsourcing our judgment? How do we move faster while still thinking carefully? How do we prepare organizations for a world where technology is changing how we analyze, create, decide, and lead?
Given my role leading digital products, I have always been interested in how technology creates value, but the MBA pushed me to think more intentionally about what it means to apply technology well. My biggest insight from using AI is that it is most powerful when treated as a partner in co-intelligence, not as a substitute for human judgment. AI can help organize ideas, pressure-test assumptions, explore alternatives, and sharpen communication. However, it cannot replace lived experience, ethical responsibility, emotional intelligence, or a leader’s obligation to make wise decisions in context.
For me, AI reinforced a larger leadership lesson. Technology is powerful, but it still needs human judgment, empathy, strategic thinking, and a clear sense of purpose to create meaningful impact.
What was the main reason you chose an executive MBA program over part-time or online alternatives? I chose an Executive MBA because I wanted a program designed for experienced professionals who were actively leading while learning. While part time and online programs are valuable, I knew I wanted a more immersive experience built around live discussion, the accountability of the case method, the richness of an executive cohort, and the ability to apply what I was learning immediately to real leadership challenges.
The executive format also respected the reality of my life. I was not stepping away from my career or family responsibilities. As a result, I needed a program that could meet me at that stage, while still challenging me at the highest level. Darden’s EMBA gave me the combination of academic rigor, in-person connection, executive level peers, global perspective, and practical application.
How did you finance your EMBA and what did you do to make tuition and associated costs more affordable? I financed my Executive MBA primarily through student loans and personal financial planning. I viewed the program as a long-term investment in my leadership capacity, career trajectory, and future impact, but I also knew I had to be very thoughtful about the cost.
To make the cost more manageable, I continued working full time throughout the program, planned carefully around travel and residency expenses, and made trade-offs where necessary. The financial commitment was significant, but I approached the EMBA with the mindset that it was an investment in the next stage of my career, my confidence, my network, and the kind of leader and builder I intend to become.
What is your ultimate long-term professional goal? My ultimate long-term professional goal is to become a CEO and build or lead an organization that creates meaningful, measurable, and lasting impact at scale. I want to continue growing as a senior digital product, strategy, and AI-oriented leader in environments where technology is used to solve complex problems, shape better systems, and improve how people and organizations work. For me, leadership has never been only about title or position. It is about building something meaningful, leading people with care and courage, and creating value that continues to matter beyond the immediate moment.
Longer term, I want to create something profitable, scalable, deeply human, and enduring. A major part of that vision is rooted in intergenerational storytelling, wisdom preservation, leadership, and human flourishing. I believe that stories, values, lessons, and lived experiences are some of the most powerful assets people and communities carry, yet too often they are lost before they can shape the next generation. I want to build platforms, systems, and communities that help preserve and amplify that wisdom in ways that strengthen families, institutions, and society.
Beyond corporate leadership, I also want to teach, mentor, and give back through education. I care deeply about helping the next generation of leaders grow with excellence, courage, humility, and purpose. Ultimately, I want my work to create more than short-term success. I want it to carry forward the belief that growth should last, impact should endure, and the wisdom of one generation should help strengthen the next.
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