Exiled: Emeka Chinwuba, Cahill
Today’s guest is Emeka Chinwuba, Partner at Cahill, Gordon & Reindel. A seasoned project finance lawyer, Emeka is inspired by fellow Nigerian legal minds whose resilience supports infrastructure and energy needs across Sub-Saharan Africa. His Exile brings together personal stories and business leaders who have demonstrated resilience even in the most challenging of circumstances.
Welcome to Exiled: Dealmakers on a Desert Island, a podcast where we ‘strand’ a guest on a remote island and ask them who from their professional past, present, and future they’d choose to be stranded with. After all, it’s people that make a profession.
Today’s guest is Emeka Chinwuba, Partner at Cahill, Gordon & Reindel. A seasoned project finance lawyer, Emeka is inspired by fellow Nigerian legal minds whose resilience support infrastructure and energy needs across Sub-Saharan Africa. His Exile brings together personal stories and business leaders who have demonstrated resilience even in the most challenging of circumstances.
From his past
Emeka’s first choice blends the personal and the professional. His sister, Ngozi Janice Okonkwo, was a true inspiration not just to Emeka, but to the project finance world as a whole. Although she is no longer with us, people still recognise her name as a giant in the legal world, and Emeka would cherish the opportunity to spend more time with her.
From his present
Continuing with his star studded line up, Emeka’s second choice for an island companion would be Sir Richard Branson. Although not a project financier himself, Branson’s approach to new ideas - even those that he was told would fail - are a fantastic model for a lawyer who sees himself not just as a professional, but a trusted advisor to his clients.
From his future
Emeka’s Exile ends where it began - in Nigeria. His final choice would be Adebayo Ogunlesi, founding partner of Global Infrastructure Partners. Like Emeka, Bayo started off as a lawyer. Emeka sees him, as he does all other successful Nigerian business minds, as a brother.
This week’s episode was recorded live from Proximo US Congress 2025 in Nashville. As a subscriber, you can access all of the recordings from the event here. You can also tap into Exile’s AI Tool, Flow, to interrogate Emeka’s top takeaways on his digital infrastructure panel here.
Tune in next week, where we’ll be speaking to another Exile!
