About

From a teenage model out of Ibadan’s slum to an undergraduate events planner, and now a global, multiple award-winning fashion entrepreneur, Aminat Aderayo Animashaun is the epitome of passion, resilience, and hard work. Her life demonstrates the determination to succeed amidst a turbulent childhood and the peculiar challenges of entrepreneurship in the global South.

Aderayo is the Founder of De’rayo Hub, an Afrocentric fashion company that transforms fashion waste into unique wearable designs intricately woven into everyday fashion. For almost two decades, she has been committed to creating outstanding fashion pieces that give her customers the ultimate Afrocentric fashion experience.
In 2023, as one of the only two Nigerians who got the honor, she received the remarkable award of recognition as World Master in Art and Craft from the World Masters Committee based in South Korea. She also attended and showcased at the Fidelity International Trade and Creative Connect, FITCC 2023 and 2023 Houston AfriFest both held in Houston, Texas.

Her unique designs in bags, shoes, clothing, and other fashion accessories are loved at home and abroad. She wears her love for the African continent on her sleeves and can hardly be caught without having an Afrocentric element in her daily outfit.
In the early years of her entrepreneurship journey, she was moved by the number of young people living in deprived, low-income communities without access to quality Education or vocational opportunities. Hence, in 2019, she launched Transforming Ten Thousand Teenagers’ a project aimed at equipping ten thousand secondary school students across Ibadan, Oyo State with free vocational skills to allow them to attain economic independence and become young bosses.

She is the Chief Executive Officer and Lead Instructor at De’rayo Vocational Limited, an arm of Der’rayo Hub, which offers fashion training to young people and stay-at-home moms. With its structure and numerous impact stories, Derayo Vocational Institute is positioning itself to metamorphose into a vocational degree-awarding Institution.

In fulfilling her creative, arts, and entrepreneurial passion, she co-founded the Prospects for Girls Foundation; an NGO that trains and empowers young girls in Africa.

Her compassionate character is second to none and this is noticeable in the amount of measurable impact she has made in society through her youth empowerment programs and numerous outreach projects. In 2021, she made it to UNESCO’s Kindness Matters Book as one of the kindest personalities in the world in the Nigerian category.

Aderayo is a recipient of the World Bank Women in Business in Nigeria Scholarship which earned her a certificate in Entrepreneurial Management from the Enterprise Development Centre of the prestigious Lagos Business School.

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Entrepreneurial and Business Management from the National Open University, NOUN, and a Diploma in Marketing from Olabisi Onabanjo University,
Ago Iwoye, Ogun State, Nigeria. A voracious knowledge seeker, she studied French and has a DELF Certificate.
She has won various awards, some of which include the POPA 2018 Excellence in Fashion and Style award, POPA 2019 Best Female Entrepreneur award, and Two-time Ibadan Media award for Most Influential Personality in Oyo state in 2018 and 2019.

Animashaun Aminat Aderayo is unapologetically African, and driven by the commitment to utilize fashion and art as a tool to tackle unemployment among Nigerian youth.