069 Esi Ansah - Leadership, Faith and Pursuing God

Esi is an Assistant Professor at Ashesi University, where she teaches classes including Human Resource Management, Organizational Behavior, and Negotiation & Creative Problem Solving, working closely with her students to help them in self-discovery, identifying, articulating and carving out their career paths.  She is an avid believer in, and contributor to achieving the vision and mission of Ashesi.  Her other professional and academic interests include social and public entrepreneurship and sustainable educational and public sector reform in Ghana.  Esi earned her Bachelor's degrees in Psychology, International Affairs and French from the Florida State University in 1999, graduating with a three Bachelor's degrees in three years cum laude (with honors).  She also holds Master's degrees in Social Sciences and in Public Service Management from the University of Chicago (2004) and DePaul University in Chicago (2002), respectively. She holds a PhD in Public Administration (2008) from Rutgers University in New Jersey. In September 2009, Esi was welcomed into the Africa Leadership Initiative as an ALI Fellow.  Esi has a deep commitment to community service and has a long history of volunteer work wherever in the world she finds herself. From caring for displaced orphans in Jamaica, to mentoring adolescents to excel academically in Florida, to laboring to refurbish houses for the low-income elderly in Kentucky, to caring for children in a daycare in France and mentoring incarcerated youth in Ghana. Esi is a member of the Board of the Longevity Project, where she also serves as a volunteer. Esi is a chocolate-lover who counts cooking and eating, writing, traveling, and photography amongst her hobbies. She believes that being spiritually alive and well is the key to her success, and describes herself as a simple, high-energy person who never runs out of ideas (she maintains a detailed Idea Bank), and also as a "grounded idealist" with a sense of urgency and an aim to bring positive transformation wherever she finds herself.