My First 365 Days at Raenest: What One Year Taught Me About Leadership and Resilience
Leading content and community at Raenest taught me the power of showing up. Here’s what my first 365 days have been like.
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Most mornings, it still feels strange.
Watching the sun come up. Hearing the world outside kick into gear while I sip my tea in silence. There’s a part of me that still expects the rush. The chaos. The need to jump up and run somewhere. But the only race now is the one I design, and boy, do I love it here. Like Achebe said, “The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.” I’m learning to move with the rhythm that fits me.
Before Raenest, mornings were always a blur, with time slipping away before I even felt ready. I wake up at 5 a.m. Not because I enjoy the serenity of early mornings, but because Lagos traffic doesn’t care about anyone’s good intentions. It has its own routine, and woe betide you if you don’t flow with it like the rest. You either fall in line or be left behind.
There's the rush to get dressed in the dark. The radio hosts who somehow sound too chirpy for that hour. The sigh when you realise your Bolt ride got cancelled again. And of course, that tiny thread of hope that today, just maybe, the road will be kind.
Then came remote work. And with it, a shift I didn’t quite expect.
Hi, I’m Chiamaka Eneje, the newest member of the team that gives voice, colour, life and expression to the Raenest brand - The Content and Community Team, and in the last 90 days plus, I’ve felt a beautiful shift not just in my work, but in who I am and how I move through the world.
Remote work gifted me mornings again, gentle and quiet pockets of time I barely noticed before. Now I take slow walks, just enough to hear my feet on the pavement and catch the city waking up around me. Breakfast stopped being a rushed grab and became something real. Sometimes eggs, sometimes oats. Once I made pancakes and actually had the time to snap a photo and post it. Growth.
These little habits, surprisingly, started forming alongside something bigger. A feeling that I was becoming a more present version of myself. And at the centre of all this newness was Raenest. The place I now get to call work.
Joining the Team
The day I got the email from Yetunde, our People and Culture lead, I read it twice just to be sure it was real. You know those emails you screenshot and send to your friends with too many exclamation marks? That was me. I had always wanted a remote job. Who wouldn’t? The ease. The peace of mind. The "I can finally let go of the suit and tie" freedom. The relief of not battling traffic before I’ve even had breakfast.
Yetunde’s email didn’t feel cold or templated. It felt like someone on the other side was genuinely excited to have me on board. That set the tone. The onboarding process that followed was so efficient and layered with conversations, thoughtful documentation, and moments that made me feel like I was stepping into something that had structure but also room for individuality.
In between the Slack messages, emails, and welcome calls, one word kept showing up. Culture, not the vague kind that just sits on a company website. A working kind called CRAFT.
What is CRAFT?
At Raenest, CRAFT shows up in the everyday things. It’s in our meetings, in the way we write to each other, how we give feedback, celebrate progress, and learn from what didn’t go as planned. It’s a shared way of working that helps us stay aligned, focused, and thoughtful in everything we do. CRAFT stands for:
The best work happens when we come together. Real collaboration. Not the kind where one person does the heavy lifting while others just agree. Here, you feel the impact of the team. You feel supported. People ask questions, offer help, and challenge your ideas in a way that makes the work better. In turn, it makes you want to bring your best.
Everyone here carries a sense of trust. You say you’ll do something, and you do it. If life happens, you say so with honesty and accountability. This builds confidence that the people you work with will show up.
This one hit me personally. You are trusted to lead from wherever you are. There’s no breathing-down-your-neck energy. You’re expected to own your work, ask for help when needed, and figure things out in a way that stretches you but doesn’t break you. It gave me room to breathe and grow. It reminded me that I’m not here to be managed. I’m here to contribute.
At Raenest, everyone’s voice counts. Feedback isn’t something reserved for “senior people”. You can share your thoughts, ideas, and questions, and you’ll be heard. Respect isn’t optional. It is the baseline.
Wins are shared. So are stumbles. No one pretends here. From management to team leads, there’s a tone of openness that is refreshing. You know where the company is going. You know what’s working. You know what needs work. And you’re invited to be part of the journey.
After 90 days plus of practising this in my day-to-day, I realised that they were slowly shaping how I live and how I move through my day. Collaboration meant I no longer waited to have a perfect answer before speaking up in meetings. This confidence helped me voice the Africa Day campaign video, a project that felt personal to me as an African navigating the global tech space. Reliability made me more mindful of how I planned my tasks, not simply to meet deadlines but to meet them with care and quality. Because of this, when I shared an idea for our anniversary campaign, it gained traction and helped us reach over 8000 blog views, one of my biggest wins in just two months of being here.
Autonomy gave me the room to build a structure that works for me. I was not caught up in rushing through tasks; I was fully present in making them count, which allowed me to take on meaningful projects like curating a blog cluster strategy on schooling in the UK, a series that climbed to the top of Google search results. Fairness reminded me that even as the newest person in the room, my voice mattered and was welcomed. This helped me step into a mentorship role alongside impactful women like FK Abudu, Peace Itimi, and Seun Alley, growing not just professionally but personally.
Transparency helped me ask better questions because I understood the bigger picture I was part of. This broader perspective encouraged me to reach out more confidently, stop second-guessing myself, and write with intention.
Before Raenest and CRAFT, it felt like the day was already waiting for me, half-spent. Now, I ease into it. I have a playlist just for mornings. I am learning to be before I begin. Raenest has given me the space to find my rhythm. To slow down without losing momentum. To work with focus, not pressure. To show up as I am, and still be seen.
90 days plus in, I still feel new. But I also feel trusted. I am learning, stretching, trying, asking, and building. I now understand what it means to be part of a team that does not only create content but also reflects the clarity, care, and consistency behind it. The kind of team where ideas are not just welcome, but built upon.
It’s a rare kind of joy to grow in a place that invites you to become.
