LEKAN OLAWOYE

Local leader inspired to act

‘I can’t get complacent and comfortable’

ON MOST MORNINGS, Lekan Olawoye, a married father of three young children, who holds more jobs and titles than he can name off the top of his head, is awake before dawn. (He does not drink coffee.) “I have a chip on my shoulder—I have a lot to do, I have a lot to prove.”

He was sitting in a boardroom near his office in the MaRS Discovery District, a few blocks from Ryerson University. It was 9:30 a.m., and he had already been awake for five hours, and had taken part in at least one conference call before sitting down for an interview that was slotted into one of only two available windows on his schedule that week.