Jehu Lukwesa
Animator and Graphic Design Assistant
My journey with WVD came almost out of nowhere, during a time I was trying to build a career in animation. I’d recently moved out of my parent’s house and I was, at the time, living with my grandmother in the city of Ndola, Zambia. My friend Monica Nambeya messaged me one day asking for my email address, and said “I want to recommend you for something.” I didn’t think too much of it.
Several days later, she asked for my design portfolio. I still wasn’t sure what she was up to, and I just quietly trusted her. Even more days later, she texted saying “The CEO wants to meet with you!”. I was both mildly excited and confused – what CEO? CEO of what? What is going on?
Three years later, life allowed me to join this incredible team as Assistant for Latin America and the Caribbean, and since then, my world has undergone a complete transformation.
The meeting finally happened, and before I knew it, I was working on an animation for a new campaign WVD was putting together. I was given a brief, and I was pretty eager to carry out the task, because visual storytelling really gets my engine revving.
Fast forward to present day, I’m an Animator and Graphic Design Assistant at WVD. The graphic design part was a given; I’ve been a freelance graphic designer since 2018. I am self-taught in both fields (Graphic Design and Animation).
The idea of conveying meaningful and sometimes complex ideas through visual storytelling excites me, I am a storyteller at heart, and it is my hope that the ideologies that WVD stands for – which I admire and have great respect for – can easily reach more people due to my contribution through these skills I’ve been developing for years.
I’m always thinking about how suddenly this opportunity fell into my path, and it makes me feel warm inside because for as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed of doing what I love as my job. My role at WVD is well-aligned with my ikigai.
