Rotary International: The Game Changer in Global Service
Teh game changer
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Meet yoru 2026-27 Rotary president, Olayinka Hakeem Babalola
Olayinka “Yinka” Hakeem Babalola is sitting on the wrong side of his desk, staring at the tiny squares on the laptop perched in front of him. He’s just finished speaking on a call with 300 Rotaractors from the African continent and other parts of the world, Rotary’s president-elect explains as he turns down the volume. “They held a festivity for me as I’m a past Rotaractor,” he says. By seeing Babalola, himself once in their shoes, embarking on the highest position in Rotary, who knows how many of the 300 he will inspire. It’s early October, less than two months since the Rotary International board of Directors selected Babalola to lead Rotary, in a special session in late August after the resignation of RI President-elect SangKoo Yun, who died shortly after, following months of cancer treatment.
It’s only the second trip to Rotary headquarters for Babalola, of the Rotary Club of Trans Amadi in Nigeria, since his selection. His office is nearly empty, void so far of all the gifts Rotary leaders tend to accumulate during their travels as an incoming president.
While he’s new to the position,he has a long history with rotary,starting as a Rotaractor in 1984 and then as a Rotarian in 1994. “One thing is for certain, preparing me for this role are my many years of engaging with Rotary” – over four decades, he says. “Not many people who get to this position have that privilege.”
In that time,he’s served not only as RI vice president and a member of the RI Board of Directors but also as an active leader and participant in RI committees such as the End Polio Now Countdown to History Campaign Committee and the Nigeria PolioPlus Committee. Babalola was a trustee of ShelterBox. His Rotary honors include the Regional Service Award for a Polio-Free World, the Service Above Self Award, and a Rotary Foundation Citation for Meritorious service.He and his wife, Preba, a member of the Rotary Club of Port Harcourt passport, are Arch Klumph Society members.
That’s all on top of his professional life. He worked for 25 years in the oil and gas industry, holding senior positions with Shell. He is the founder of two companies: Riviera Technical Services Ltd., an oil and gas infrastructure delivery company, and lead and Change Consulting, an executive coaching and organizational performance advisory group.
Rotary magazine senior staff writer Diana Schoberg sat down with Babalola to find out more about the president-elect.
He was inspired to join Rotary as of something he saw on TV.
On summer break between his last year o“`html
President-elect Olayinka Hakeem Babalola stands outside Rotary’s headquarters building with Rotary Foundation Trustee Martha Peak Helman and RI Vice President alain Van de Poel.
Image credit: Monika Lozinska
His nickname is “the game changer.”
Babalola served as district governor in 2011-12 while employed by Shell,a multinational energy company. This was unlike his predecessors, who were either retired or running their own businesses while they held that role. He knew things had to change for him to be prosperous.
At his first meeting with the assistant governors and committee chairs,he asked them to include what would be the “game changer” in their proposals: how they used to do things,and how their approach would change going forward. “If they have no answer,” he says, “the proposal is thrown away. They need to present it again.
“It occurred to people that this guy actually wants something different,” he continues. “I’m called the game changer, but the ideas that changed the game were not mine.”
