Five Questions With Emma Asiedu-Akrofi, Chief Executive Officer, Fora: Network for Change
Pictured: Fora’s CEO, Emma Asiedu-Akrofi at our Young Feminist Economy Event.
The following article was originally published in Women of Influence on February 4th, 2025.
Emma Asiedu-Akrofi has spent more than a decade shaping conversations around gender equity, leadership, and systemic change. As the Chief Executive Officer of Fora: Network for Change, she leads with a vision of empowering women and girls while tackling the structural barriers that persist in professional and social spaces.
Before stepping into her current role, Emma served as Executive Director of the Jean Augustine Centre for Young Women’s Empowerment, where she championed programs designed to uplift and equip young women with the tools to succeed. A Black Canadian woman of Ghanaian descent, her leadership is guided by an intersectional, anti-oppressive approach — ensuring that the fight for equity includes those at the margins.
We spoke with Emma about the role of advocacy in today’s social and economic landscape, what it takes to create lasting change, and why representation at the highest levels still matters.
Q: Balancing strategic leadership with the demands of day-to-day operations can be challenging. What habits or routines help you stay grounded and focused as you navigate these responsibilities?
A: Staying grounded and focused is a daily commitment — and I don’t always get it right. But when I do, having a structured routine makes all the difference.
I prioritize simple self-care practices like healthy eating and movement and remain mindful of the media I consume. With so much happening globally — from humanitarian crises to climate challenges — it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. I strive to stay informed as a global citizen and strategic leader while balancing this with protecting my mental well-being.
On the work front, intentional scheduling is essential. The first 90 minutes of my day are reserved for ‘focused work’ — time to plan, prioritize, and tackle tasks requiring deep attention. Also, holding team meetings on Mondays helps align priorities for the week, while dedicating the last hour of the day to clearing outstanding tasks and responding to questions helps in keeping operations on track.
Finally, what truly keeps me grounded, is connecting with the community I serve. I’m privileged to work with inspiring young women and gender-marginalized youth who are driving meaningful change through leadership opportunities.
No matter how full my schedule gets, I make time for coffee chats and conversations with participants, alumni, and our community, and its these connections that remind me why I do this work and inspire me to grow as a leader every day.
Q: Your leadership emphasizes creating equitable opportunities and dismantling systemic barriers. How do you approach creating systems and programs that challenge structural inequalities and create lasting change?
A: The magic of Fora: Network for Change lies in how we approach creating systems and programs that challenge structural inequalities across three levels of change.
At the individual level, we run both our national program, Rise on Boards, and our international program, the Global Summit. Both programs equip young women and gender-marginalized youth aged 18 to 29 with training, coaching, mentorship, resources, and experiential learning opportunities to access leadership spaces.
At the sectoral level, we collaborate with organizations to deliver educational initiatives and build capacity. Most recently, we’ve focused on scaling Rise on Boards across Canada, particularly in Northern, Atlantic, and Francophone regions. This includes fostering partnerships with organizations committed to advancing gender equity and youth leadership by adopting EDI best practices, updating bylaws and policies, and offering a one-year board placement for a trained young director.
At the systems level, we tackle systemic barriers such as income inequality, early career gaps, and the lack of workplace leadership opportunities for young women and gender-marginalized youth through research. Most notably, our 2024 Young Feminist Economy Report provided a comprehensive snapshot of the economic realities facing these groups in Canada. The report, shared with the federal government, non-profits, and private sector organizations, offered actionable recommendations to foster a more inclusive and prosperous economy for young women and gender-marginalized youth.
Q: As the CEO of Fora: Network for Change, how do you ensure your platform amplifies underrepresented voices and creates tangible opportunities for those you serve?
A: Prior to my joining, Fora was already doing incredible work amplifying underrepresented voices and creating meaningful opportunities for the communities we serve. Coming into Fora as its first Black CEO, as well as having the lived experience of experiencing misogynoir (a term coined by Dr. Moya Bailey to describe where sexism and Anti-Blackness intersect), the framework of intersectional Feminism is integral to my leadership approach. This framework, by Black Scholar Kimberle Crenshaw, recognizes how identities like race, class, sexuality, disability (and many others), layer on to shape complex experiences of marginalization. It’s a framework that I often reflect on, informing my personal ethos and in my role as CEO, and is what I lean on to inform how I want to lead at Fora.
Since entering into the CEO role in late 2023, I’ve prioritized building on this foundational work, specifically through our hiring and HR practices, and policies.
This is so key because when we build our policies and organizational practices to reflect the diversity of human experiences and needs, we make it clear that, as an organization, we prioritize people and have the infrastructure to support their needs.
As a direct action, one of our key implementations was engaging consultants to reassess HR policies and recruitment practices to ensure they reflect the values that guide our work of inclusion, equity, and accessibility for our staff and volunteers.
On a broader scale, and as an organization, we are striving to create more equitable and inclusive spaces for young women and gender-marginalized youth through our Intentional Inclusion on Boards training, and expansion of our Rise on Boards program across the country—which works at the systematic level to equip boards with actionable strategies to create safer, more supportive environments for underrepresented communities, as well as create the space for the full participation of young gender-marginalized leaders, when they’re invited into their spaces.
Additionally, we continue to prioritize accessibility for Black, Indigenous, and people of color within our programs, with 70% of our participants identifying as part of one or more racialized groups.
Finally, as we chart our strategic direction for 2025–2030, as a leader, I continue to apply this lens of intersectional feminism, equity and inclusion, to guide us in developing even further opportunities that create tangible outcomes for our staff, participants, alumni and general community.
Q: Was there a particular experience or milestone in your career that solidified your commitment to advocating for gender equity and social justice? How has it shaped your vision as a leader?
A: Growing up in a Ghanaian-Canadian household, educational expectations were equally placed on me and my brother — both of us were encouraged to pursue higher education. But when it came to household responsibilities, things looked very different. I was expected to be in the kitchen learning how to cook and clean, while my brother was not. Even as a child, I recognized how unfair this was. Feeding and caring for oneself is not a gendered task, and it shouldn’t be treated as one.
Later, in my first full-time role in the corporate insurance world, I saw another imbalance — this time in leadership. Almost every senior management position was held by older white men. The only woman of color I knew in leadership was my manager, a brilliant Black woman who worked relentlessly to gain access to opportunities that others received simply by virtue of their race and gender. That experience stuck with me.
On the positive side, my seven-year journey as Executive Director of the Jean Augustine Centre for Young Women’s Empowerment showed me what’s possible when girls are given access and opportunity. I saw girls as young as seven thrive in areas where they are often underrepresented, like STEM and sports.
Those moments reminded me that systemic change starts with creating space for young women and marginalized youth to see themselves in leadership.
These experiences have shaped my unwavering commitment to advancing gender equity and social justice. They fuel my desire to keep moving the needle forward, knowing that while progress has been made, there’s still a long way to go. According to the World Economic Forum, it could take 134 years to reach gender parity — and that’s far too long. We have to continue pushing for change so future generations don’t have to navigate these same barriers.
Q: If you could spearhead one transformative project to empower underserved groups, what would it focus on, and what impact would you hope to see?
I would love to continue building on the work we’re doing at Fora, while expanding opportunities specifically for racialized groups within Black and Indigenous communities — who are often the most underrepresented.
It’s often said that you can’t be what you can’t see, but I would take it further: you can’t be what you don’t have access to — even if you can see it.
My goal is to continue creating access to meaningful opportunities for young women and gender-marginalized youth from these communities and, in doing so, spark systemic change that extends far beyond Fora’s reach.
Exposure to leadership opportunities at a young age matters. It gives young people the freedom to explore, fail, learn, and grow without feeling like they’ve missed their chance. When youth facing racial and gender-based barriers have equitable access to opportunity, they can better chart paths that feel authentic to who they are.
In a world more eager than ever to shut down diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — I want to see industries that have historically lacked diversity transformed by these young leaders, because it’s this diversity of thought, experience, and perspective that sparks much-needed innovation. Whether entering into senior roles, excelling in trades, or innovating in technology, their success would be a clear marker of progress.