Vanessa Okwuraiwe is a principal of the financial services company Edward Jones. She is a member of the firm’s strategic leadership team with a focus on developing and sustaining an inclusive and supportive corporate environment and having a positive, meaningful impact on the lives of its many clients, associates, and communities.

During her 19-year career with the firm, Okwuraiwe has led talent acquisition, training, development, and marketing functions. She serves on Edward Jones’s purpose and inclusion forum and is a keen advocate on behalf of the Edward Jones financial literacy program. She has been involved in a number of non-profit organizations, including the United Way and its efforts to support more than 160 nonprofit agencies and with the Arts and Education Council, which uses art to inspire kids and enrich local communities.

Okwuraiwe’s passion and commitment for education and supporting young minds also inspired her to assume her current role as a member of the board of the St. Louis Community College Foundation.

In 2019, Okwuraiwe was named as one of the year’s Best & Brightest Executive MBA graduates by the highly-regarded business school site Poets & Quants. Okwuraiwe is the recipient of several degrees, including a bachelor’s degree in economics from Edo State University, Nigeria, a master’s degree in development economics from the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, and an EMBA from the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Okwuraiwe’s involvement with CGU reflects the long and fruitful relationship that the university has enjoyed with Edward Jones. That relationship started in the 1980s when the firm’s managing director John Bachmann (also a former CGU trustee) sought the help of Peter Drucker to advise the firm and train its executives.

Okwuraiwe joined the Board of Trustees of Claremont Graduate University in 2021.