Ellington

As the first generation of his family to live in America and the president of his own company, Quincy Mukoro, 33, has had an interesting journey to Mississippi.

After his father, Dr. Saliba Mukoro, attempted to overthrow the Nigerian ruler, General Ibrahim Babangida, in 1990, the government threw a young Mukoro, his mother, Dorah Mukoro, and his immediate family members into prison for roughly a year, though his father was able to flee.

"That forced us to have to grow up at a young age very quickly," Mukoro says. "Once you have been through that kind of adversity at a young age, you try to find out the person you are really supposed to be."

Three Nigerian presidencies later, a distant cousin of Saliba became president and pardoned he and his family. Mukoro's mother and father chose to live in Nigeria, but he decided to leave for the United States.

A Huntsville, Texas, native, Mukoro attended the University of Mississippi, where he received a bachelor's degree in political science in 2004. After attending Ole Miss, Quincy attended Mississippi State University and earned a master's degree in public policy and administration in 2007, moving to the Jackson area later that year.

From 2007 to 2014, Mukoro served as the director of government affairs for the Mississippi Municipal League, a private nonprofit organization that lobbies for municipalities with state, federal and private entities. Mukoro says his employment there assisted him in forming his own business, The Octagon Group, which he began focusing on full-time in January 2014.

Based in Jackson, The Octagon Group handles both business development and government relations, concentrating on county and city governments. On the government-relations side, the company lobbies on behalf of associations, private interests and local government entities for the protection of revenue. In business development, it represents private-sector clients that want to provide services to cities and towns.

Mukoro says connections from Mississippi State have helped him maintain strong ties in local government, and The Octagon Group is always willing to work with businesses, even those that might not be as well funded. "We see the greater good in those issues," he says.

Mukoro and his wife, Christina, married in August 2014 and have an 8-year-old daughter, Cayden, from his first marriage. His hobbies are golfing, traveling and spending time with his family. He says that if an opportunity ever arose for him to run for a local political office, he would pursue it if his wife supported the decision. "My wife has really focused me," he says. "... I feel now that I have a reason bigger than myself to do what I do."