Sex educator says public-health gap drove her career change
Elizabeth Adewale says her work as a sex educator grew from a desire to help people and address a lack of accessible information. In a Punch interview, she discusses moving from Chemistry into public health, overcoming social backlash and producing short, research-based online content for her audience.
Elizabeth Adewale says a desire to help people and a perceived lack of accessible information led her from Chemistry into public health and sex education. Speaking to Punch, Adewale said she initially wanted to study Medicine and Surgery but studied Chemistry after missing the required cut-off mark. At university, she helped other students prepare for examinations and improve their grades, an experience she said reflected her continuing interest in supporting people.
After graduating with a first-class degree, she decided not to pursue a long-term career in Chemistry. She encountered sex education after university and became interested in the need for reliable information. A scholarship enabled her to train as a certified sex educator at an institute in the United States.
Adewale said public health was a natural transition because it brought her closer to the health field she had originally hoped to enter. She now combines sex education with public-health work and online content creation. She grew up in a Christian home where sex was treated as taboo.
Adewale said her early exposure to pornography was not accompanied by an understanding of what she was seeing, while her more formal introduction to sex education came much later, during university. Her parents initially did not understand the nature of her work. She said they discovered it while she was working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, after which she explained the field to them.
According to Adewale, they have since become supportive, with her mother understanding the consequences of inadequate information and her father, a pastor, recognising that she is building a career. Adewale said her content ideas often come from audience questions. She researches topics, writes simple scripts and tries to make concise videos with strong opening lines.
She usually films with her sister’s assistance and sometimes records several videos in one session, although she said stammering and muddled sentences can require repeated takes.
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