About Pastor Segun Adebayo

Pastor Segun Adebayo

Early Life & Education

Born and raised in the former Western Region of Nigeria, Reverend Adebayo hails from the Yoruba nation. He completed his secondary education and earned the Foreign Government scholarship to pursue post-secondary education in the defunct Soviet Union at the Kiev Institute of Civil Aviation Engineers, Ukraine, graduating with distinction in 1975. He then proceeded on a research assistant grant to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, where he earned the Doctor of Philosophy in Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1978, specializing in fluid dynamics of high-performance engine compressors.

Military & Academic Career

Reverend Adebayo had a distinguished stint as a commissioned officer in the Nigerian Air Force, retiring honorably with the rank of Major. He subsequently joined the faculty of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of the District of Columbia, where he served for decades with exceptional dedication.

In addition to his teaching and research duties, he served as the Director of the Science and Engineering Center, providing enrichment activities in STEM programs to grade students throughout the DC metro area every Saturday in the fall and winter, as well as during the summer. He also supplied NASA training materials to DC school teachers.

Throughout his academic career, he participated in conferences, earned research grants, and published numerous articles. He served as faculty director for several student clubs and supervised many student projects. In 2019, he retired as a Full Professor having served as Department Chair and the last three years as Associate Dean in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He remains a Professor Emeritus and serves on the Advisory Boards of both the Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering programs.

Ministry

Reverend Adebayo is an ordained minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He served as Assistant Pastor before taking on the role of Pastor of Macedonia Baptist Church, a position he has held for the past six years. One of his greatest passions is encouraging and assisting youth to pursue college education — to that end, he organizes weekend tutoring sessions for young people as needed.

Community Leadership

Reverend Adebayo is a co-founder, along with his wife Marsha, of the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition (BACC), organized to protect and preserve the Moses Cemetery where hundreds of ancestors are buried. For nearly eight years, the BACC has waged a valiant struggle against the desecration of this ancestral burial ground.

He is an active member of UNIA Division 330, deeply committed to its values and ideals, and a member of the Silver Spring Justice Coalition, having organized and participated in several rallies protesting the killing of young Black men in Montgomery County.

He serves in the leadership of two self-help organizations — the Igbara-Oke Citizens in the Americas (ICA) and Christ's School Alumni Association of North America (CSAANA) — both organized to support development initiatives in his home community in Nigeria.

He is a proud father of two wonderful and socially-conscious children.