Marcia Ashong-Sam
Founder of TheBoardroom Africa and named as one of the 100 most influential Africans by New African Magazine, Marcia Ashong-Sam is challenging the world to see Africa - and its leaders - as the clear powerhouse they are. Here, she talks about her passion for fuelling governance and leadership diversity.
Catalysing Africa’s talent and capitalising on its vast resources is a mission for Marcia Ashong-Sam - and gender diversity and systemic change in business are key. This belief led her to set up TheBoardroom Africa (TBrA) in 2016, which is now the region’s premier business dedicated to promoting exceptional, diverse talent to board and executive positions and providing comprehensive executive education to empower leaders to transform their businesses. It is the continent’s largest and fastest-growing community for executives. Passionate about cultivating innovative approaches to leadership diversity and the power of strong corporate governance, the Ghana-born entrepreneur is forging a ‘continent-wide movement for change’ - and it’s one in which Africa’s potential is the first thought, not an afterthought for business and on the wider world stage.
I’m Fante, which is a matrilineal tribe, and I grew up surrounded by powerful women. One of those women was my grandmother, who was a huge presence. Unlike many women of her time, she was a businesswoman and travelled the world trading. I had a first-hand view of this, and of my grandfather being in a supportive role. We are a paramount family, part of a chieftaincy system, and it’s a strange dynamic in that although we’re matrilineal, women cannot be chiefs. They do have a huge influence on who becomes a chief though – with the most powerful being kingmakers.
I always saw myself coming back to Ghana. I had thought I wanted to get into human rights law after graduating from law school in the UK, but something about the energy sector was also calling to me. Ghana had also just discovered oil and gas at the time and so that was an interesting pivot for me to see whether I could be in this industry - and, importantly, why?
I wanted to tell a different narrative about having resource wealth and how that translates into development and effective governance. Multinational oil companies were male-dominated environments at the time with lots of technical and high-powered individuals and little introspection in terms of how the industry was going to help change the world. I started to question [the absence of women] and I increasingly became interested in finding out what was stopping women from accessing the highest levels of leadership.
When I see a gap in the social fabric, I want to do something about it. It stems partly from my human rights background, but here I also wanted to come from a business-case perspective, merging the traditional advocacy approach with the need for business to maximise profits. I wanted to understand what was driving decisions against women or effective governance systems - and how we could build an environment where business understands the value of insurance inclusivity. I feel like that is what really changes the narrative and makes the conversations more practical, especially for businesses who care primarily about the bottom line, and little about other things they feel are a ‘nice to have’.
I set up TBrA to focus on building better boardrooms and more inclusive leadership spaces. I wanted to enhance and amplify the potential of Africa's exceptional leaders and we do that by connecting businesses with talent and working with leaders, especially women, and equipping them with the resources they need as they navigate their leadership journeys.
I am passionate about advancing African women in leadership and thinking about what that means in the broader context of governance. I saw how systems were guiding women away from being part of the decision making. I saw how difficult it was to keep going at the rate I was without being pushed down by the patriarchal setting. There was a constant need to always have allies, to work harder than everybody else.
As the world becomes more and more turbulent, it is even more critical to have leaders that are servant leaders - and having them be role models for future generations. Leaders such as Mandela have had a huge impact in the way I see the world and in the way that I try to show up as a leader myself. Desmond Tutu is another big influence, and that goes to the heart of why I became a Tutu Fellow at the African Leadership Institute. I strongly believe in a way of leading which is, in some cases, about putting others first, and, importantly, speaking up when nobody else wants to and it's not popular to.
When you have a long-term perspective rooted in the people, society and progress, the way that you lead will be entirely different. I want to see African leaders thinking more long term. Leadership is not necessarily about how you lead today but about the systems and the processes and the human capital that you put in place, so that when you're not there, your legacy thrives.
The idea that governance is ultimately the driver of ESG is a profound view that I strongly agree with. Good governance is ultimately the foundation for everything else to follow. If you don’t have a good governance framework the environmental and social considerations cannot effectively be integrated into decision making processes. And it's how you make those decisions that ultimately guides whether they are effective, and whether they are adopted more broadly by all stakeholders.
As an entrepreneur, good governance gives me reassurance. I go to bed at night knowing I have people on board who are helping me steer the organisation and who see my blind spots. Often with a new company, governance is the last thing you want to address. It’s a nuisance and stops you in your tracks, it makes you take a seat and reflect when you want to make quick decisions and be agile. But when you miss that out, you’ll head towards a brick wall in the future that no one sees coming, and when it matters most – in a growth stage. Governance gives you the resources not only to manage crises as they come up, but also to manage risks and direct the long term value creation.”