Board Member

Chinwe Ohanele is an attorney and serial entrepreneur currently serving as a senior program manager at the Michaelson Institute for Intellectual Property. Michaelson’s goal is to build a new scalable publishing model to provide low-cost or free textbooks to replace commoditized textbooks of all high-enrollment general education courses. Ms. Ohanele is the founder of her own boutique legal practice, Chinwe Law Firm, wherein she offers business and IP legal services. Ms. Ohanele realized early on her career how profoundly IP can impact a business’s bottom line–no matter its size. This realization led Ms. Ohanele to work in empowering African entrepreneurs and creators and advising on the legal implications of domesticating and raising capital in the United States. She has been instrumental in multiple ventures in Nigeria, helping the Nigerian film and television industry widen its footprint with Netflix. She also helped to organize a comic book convention in Lagos, Nigeria, in partnership with comic book ecosystem leaders such as Comics Republic, Peda Studios, and YouNeek Studios to launch UNICON. Ms. Ohanele earned a J.D. from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a B.S. in economics and philosophy from University of the Pacific. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould Law School.