Drea Okeke is a content creator who used to be an engineer. The Nigerian American’s skills include comedy, storytelling, consulting, motivational speaking, and public speaking. She has been praised as one of the top TikTokers to follow over the years.
She has seven million TikTok followers and has worked with Nissan, Google, Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven, Disney, Netflix, McDonald’s, and TikTok. She also owns Next Level Influence, an education company that teaches people how to develop digital communities.
Okeke’s adventure into content creation began in college. She discovered content production as a way to escape the continuous studying she was undertaking for her bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering.
“I started to make videos of myself as a fun distraction and a way to entertain both myself along with my peers. What initially started as a way to kill time quickly evolved into a passion for creating engaging and relatable content,” she told Wonderland Magazine.
She moved to California after college to work as a full-time engineer. She worked her day job while still creating material, and by 2018, she had garnered traction and notoriety for making people laugh and bringing joy to many.
“Witnessing people drawn to my videos and receiving positive feedback inspired me to fully embrace content creation as a career,” she noted. “The love and support from my growing audience further solidified my commitment to entertaining and inspiring others. Today, my journey in content creation continues to be a labor of love, where I’m grateful for the opportunity to connect with a diverse and engaged community through my humour and relatable storytelling,” she said.
Okeke’s content producing journey was not without difficulties. According to Forbes, she had to overcome personal challenges in order to be named one of the top 50 content creators in the world. Her baldness was a sensitive matter for her. The prospect of being exposed to the entire world, according to her, was terrifying.
“I knew that my intention for wanting to share it with people was to show that self-love is a journey worth embracing, and that it’s okay to be different, but that didn’t negate how hard of a decision it was,” she noted.
“The hardest mountain to climb isn’t the tallest one but the one where you have to face your demons, and by demons I mean insecurities. But I pushed the button nevertheless and it was published for everyone to see.”
Her social media prowess has landed her on Forbes’ list of the 2023 Top Creators. She earned $1 million and is rated 49 on the list, according to the business publication.
Okeke was born in Nigeria, but her family relocated to New York when she was a child. According to Forbes, integrating into American society was initially difficult, but the differences allowed her to grow and harness her God-given gifts.
“Being that girl with an accent and extremely tall towering over all my peers made me stand out and targeted to be bullied,” Okeke recalled to the magazine. But her accent challenge and more helped identify her and make her a social media sensation. “There is a major demographic of first-generation kids who can relate to my videos where I bring a lot of things from my culture in my content,” she told Forbes in the 2021 interview.
