Meeting 11-year-old Zuriel Oduwole is like encountering the alter ego of a superhero. The young girl of Nigerian and Mauritian descent with doll-like eyes and chipmunk cheeks lives with her family in an unassuming suburban American neighborhood in California. But on the African continent, she is a sensation: a rising political journalist who has interviewed one in six heads of government; a media darling with a passion to rebrand Africa; and a role model to thousands of children worldwide through her educational-rights activism.

“A lot of people see Africa as full of negative things: famine, corruption, wars,” says Zuriel, who calls Africa her home away from home. “But I’ve seen a lot of positive things that they don’t show on the news. I want to show the rest of the world that Africa has a lot of wonderful business leaders who are making positive decisions.”

Zuriel first gained attention two years ago, when she wrote to Ghana’s former president Jerry Rawlings to ask if she could interview him about the country’s 1979 revolution for a school documentary competition. Shocked when he said yes, the then-9-year-old flew to Ghana with her family and impressed Rawlings so much that her 15-minute scheduled block was extended to more than 90 minutes. The former president even ordered lunch for the two to share in his office.

From there, the story of the young journalist spread throughout Africa, and her list of high-profile interviewees grew to include presidents and prime ministers from Kenya, Liberia, South Sudan and Jamaica, to name a few. (Rawlings remains one of Zuriel’s favorites, she admits.)

Her accomplishments to date can only be abridged: youngest in the world to be featured in Forbes Africa; named one of the world’s 100 most powerful individuals by Business Insider magazine; invited to attend the African Union’s 50th anniversary conference; and selected as Global Brand Ambassador for Ethiopian Airlines and Heritage Bank’s Financial Literacy Ambassador in Nigeria.

“I just see myself as Zuriel, an 11-year-old who wakes up and still has chores,” she says when asked to describe herself, “[but] I hope I’m an inspiration to other kids on the African continent and across the world.”

This is Zuriel Oduwole in a nutshell: a child who straddles both the ordinary realities of life and its overwhelming possibilities. In person, she is a small wonder — graceful and poised, childlike yet impossibly mature, with perfect posture and a voice that has a songbird-like lilt.

She loves basketball and tennis; her favorite movie is Shark Tale; and her role model is Nelson Mandela, because “he didn’t have hatred in his heart and became a leader of his country.” What sets her apart is her indelible sense of confidence; she knows she can make her life extraordinary.

In fact, her goals may require nine lives. She’d like to retire from journalism at 19 and then become a children’s book author, a professional athlete (the 100-meter sprint would be her choice), an engineer (“I like building various contraptions”), a doctor, and eventually president of the United States (“so I can make a difference around the world”). She already knows her top three colleges too: Yale, Harvard and Princeton.

For now, Zuriel and her three younger siblings are homeschooled through an online network, an arrangement she prefers because it lets her wake up earlier than her local school system. Already in the eighth grade — three grades higher than her peers — she likes to start most days at 5 a.m. and no later than 7.

“When you finish your set lessons at other schools, you have no other lessons,” she laments. “We can get up really early and learn a lot more material.”

Her language-arts teacher through the homeschool program, Robert Yu, sees her in person several times a semester and says she’s a happy, regular kid who possesses a special strength. “She doesn’t believe there is a problem she can’t solve,” he says. “That’s unusual for a child her age.”

Zuriel is indeed remarkable, but much is also owed to her mother and father, who take on parenthood with a refreshing enthusiasm.

“If you leave your kids to regular things, they just become regular,” says her father, Ademola. A former business-restructuring adviser, he has since quit his job to manage Zuriel’s career. “But we pour confidence into them, tell them that they can be exceptional,” he says. “With Zuriel, when she’s doing something that phenomenal, you have to step up your game.”

Homeschooling lets the family travel often, says her mother, Patricia, who wants to make sure her kids enjoy a varied experience of life and culture. Together, they’ve visited more than a dozen countries and lived in Paris and Hong Kong. Zuriel and her two school-age sisters currently take Mandarin lessons in the evening.

For Patricia, every child has been endowed with something special. “As parents, we just try our best to see what they’ve been given and nurture that. Absolutely every child can excel if they’re given the opportunity.”

Zuriel grew up with that message and now wants to see it delivered to families throughout Africa. Between her travels and watching the news, she noticed that more girls in Africa were selling items on the streets than boys, and that educational opportunities usually went first to boys over girls. In response, she partnered with Nigeria’s Lagos Business School and U.S. Consulate last year to launch “Dream Up, Speak Up, Stand Up.” The program allows her to visit schools and deliver motivational speeches to students, particularly young girls, about equal rights to education and the importance of staying in school.

“I want to show that you should always dream big and never let anyone put down your dreams,” she says of her program, which has since been recognized by the U.S. State Department and deployed in 13 schools across Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria and Tanzania.

“Speak up for your dream. Stand, stand and stand again because, from my experience, many successful people fail at first before succeeding.”

YouTube features several videos of Zuriel delivering speeches. In one, she is in Tanzania, speaking to a large crowd of young students seated before her.

“If dreams were for sale, what would you buy?” she asks. “Your dreams, along with your actions, can help determine your future. And if they’re big enough, they can determine the future of many other people as well.”

She’s taking her own words to heart, too, dreaming as far as the eye can see. Up next, she’d like to interview U.S. President Barack Obama and expand her speaking program to Ethiopia. Ultimately, it’s about “each one, teach one,” she says. Her greatest hope is that every time she proves anything is possible, she’s inspiring another child to do the same.