For some store managers, their career with Lowe’s started with a role as a cashier, loader or seasonal employee. Nearly 200 current store managers started as seasonal workers. For others, their varying backgrounds bring different and unique experiences to their leadership roles at Lowe’s. But few have had as unique of a journey as one store manager in Ohio.
On July 29, 2019, Amos Olajimbiti received the keys to his first store in S.E. Columbus. For Amos, it was a proud moment for him and his family and another opportunity for him to grow with the company that he had worked for the last six years. This is not unique to a store manager's career, but what makes Amos’ story different is where it began.
Amos is from Nigeria and in the early 2000s, he served nine years in the Nigerian Army as part of a special protection unit. In 2008, he met his future wife while assigned to a missionary group she was part of. After a year of dating, Amos moved to the United States to get married and start his family, which today includes two children.
He immediately set his sights on college, enrolling in Wesleyan University and pursuing a degree in Criminal Justice. While attending college, Amos took on various jobs, including working for the Indiana Department of Corrections. Then, in 2013, following the advice of a family friend and with some experience back in his army days working for the base commissary, he took a job at Lowe’s as Department Manager of Inside Lawn and Garden.
Starting his Lowe’s career in Lawn and Garden, Amos said, was a bit ironic.
“Before my first job at Lowe’s, I had never seen a lawnmower. We did not have them in Nigeria.”
He graduated college the next year with a degree in criminal justice but chose to stick with a career at Lowe’s. Amos excelled, getting promoted to Assistant Store Manager, Assistant Store Manager Sales and then Assistant Store Manager Service.
Early in 2019, he participated in a training development day which led to going through store manager training. Amos spent months shadowing and learning his new role until that special day in July when he got his own set of keys.
It’s a moment that I would not forget for the rest of my life. Someone all the way from West Africa, I didn’t dream that I would be in the United States, running one of the biggest home improvement retail stores in the world.
When Amos talks about his leadership, he remembers what his grandfather taught him at an early age:
“Have the right people around you. For people that you lead, recognize good talent and push them forward to do bigger things.”
