2020 Activities and meet our Trustees

2020 Activites

2020 was a year for reflection and rebuilding internally. Our activities largely consisted of refreshing our strategy, governance and operational structures. Specifically, we refreshed our short- and medium-term strategy, redefined our mission, vision, pillars and values, planned for 2021, updated internal policies and onboarded new trustees.

Meet our Trustees

We’re delighted to introduce our trustees who are responsible for the overall governance, management and strategic oversight of Future of Ghana. Find out more about them below.

Bennard Owusu: Chair of Trustees

Bennard Owusu is the Senior Partner at BWF Solicitors and specialises in immigration, nationality, child, family and matrimonial law. In addition, he has expertise in general civil litigation including dispute resolution. Bennard is a member of the Ghana Bar Association and a specialist in Ghanaian law including customary law and marriages, inheritance, children, registration of mirror orders, international reciprocal agreements, land and real estate.

Bennard has 28 years’ experience in all aspects of UK immigration and nationality law and related human rights work and leads a team of advisors. His expertise covers the full spectrum of business, investor and employment related immigration as well as personal immigration matters.

Bennard is a member of the Law Society’s Family and Immigration Law Accreditation Scheme and Resolution First for Family. He is an accredited Senior Caseworker under the Solicitors Regulation Authority Accreditation Scheme (Immigration & Asylum Accreditation Scheme (IAAS)). He is also a Director at Lintas MullenLowe Accra (part of the Advantage Group), which is the oldest marketing and integrated communications agency in Ghana, established in 1927.

Doreen Thompson Addo:

Secretary

Doreen is a qualified Career Development and Wellbeing Coach with over 15 years’ experience in the not-for-profit sector. She started her career in the voluntary sector, working for one the country's largest Volunteer Centres and cofounding its award-winning corporate volunteering arm. As Head of Programmes at the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust she established a portfolio of projects for young people and the local community, gaining recognition of her programmes from the likes of Boris Johnson and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. She currently works full time at Royal Holloway University as a Careers Consultant, in addition to running a career coaching and voice-over business. Outside of work Doreen spends time exploring the great outdoors and encouraging others in the black community to do the same through her social media platform Melanin Outdoors. Doreen is our longest serving Trustee, having joined the board since November 2017.

Wilfred Fianko:

Treasurer

Wilfred is a Co-Founder of Cornerstone Partners, the UK’s first and leading Angel Network focused on investing in businesses led by black and diverse founders in the UK. Wilfred has also spent the last 12 years working as a management consultant at UBS Investment Bank, Goldman Sachs, and KPMG. He has worked on a variety of multi-million-pound change programs including business and finance transformation, optimising processes and scaling businesses seeking to grow and achieve scale efficiently.

A seasoned angel investor of almost 5 years. Wilfred’s area of focus has been within Media, Entertainment and E-commerce sectors. He is a member of the UK British Angel Association (UKBAA) and holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Brunel University. His responsibilities have also included long term operational improvement programs. This includes the flagship “Cornerstone 2.0 – The Scale-Up Program run annually for a cohort of 20 innovative and promising businesses.

Wilfred was also a finalist in the Black Business Awards 2020 entrepreneur ‘rising star’ category, a prestigious awards program to celebrate the achievement of some of the country’s best talent across a range of industries.

Nike Awoyinka:

Trustee

Head of Admissions and Recruitment at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Nike Awoyinka is responsible for shaping, implementing and operationalising student recruitment at the world-renowned specialist art education provider. She is a passionate advocate of the transformative power of arts and creative education for the development of African economies.

Before entering the UK Higher Education sector Nike worked in broadcasting and the international not for profit sectors, serving as the programme lead for the UK Department for International Development local governance programmes in Sub Saharan Africa and as the Head of Communications for Common Ground Productions, a world leading conflict transformational international NGO.

She has also worked as a positioning consultant for clients such as Louis Vuitton, Moet, Hennessey Sub Sahara Africa, Red Campaign and 46664 Mandela Project. Her education background includes a Masters in Mass Communication from London Metropolitan University and a Postgraduate Diploma in International Marketing from the London College of International Business Studies.