Patrick Awuah
Founder & President
Before founding Ashesi University, Patrick worked as a Program Manager for Microsoft where, among other things, he spearheaded the development of dial-up internet working technologies and gained a reputation for bringing difficult projects to completion.
He holds bachelor degrees in Engineering and Economics from Swarthmore College; an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business; and honorary Doctorates from Swarthmore College, Babson College and the University of Waterloo.
He has won many prestigious international awards including the Membership of the Order of the Volta -- one of Ghana’s highest awards, given to individuals who exemplify the ideal of service to the country, and the World Innovation Summit for Education Prize.
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Professor Angela Owusu-Ansah
Provost
Angela brings more than thirty years of experience in education in Africa and the United States; and is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi education honor society. She's an activist for higher education quality serving on national university accreditation agency Boards such as the Ghana Tertiary Education Council (GTEC) and served 18 years on the United States Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP, formerly NCATE).
As an education leader, Angela served as Elon University's Associate Dean of the School of Education and Associate Dean of Access and Success, Samford University's Assistant Dean of Education Assessment, and currently, Ashesi University's Provost. She curates innovative approaches, such as the scholarship of teaching and learning to improve student learning, faculty optimization, and research capacity building to improve higher education experiences and outcomes. She strongly advocates incorporating eLearning because of its benefit to the academically marginalized.
Locally and across Africa, she contributes to Ashesi's collaboration to mentor and share best practices among 70+ African universities to bring about systems change and elevate higher education's impact in Africa. She participates in the thought leadership of framing Ashesi's entrepreneurship ecosystem and Ashesi's Center for African Popular Culture to foster entrepreneurial thinking and appreciation of Africa's value.
Her research interest is in impact evaluation and change in Africa's higher education, specifically digitised higher education instruction, higher education teaching and learning as a science, intercultural understanding among African students, and African women in Higher Education leadership.
Araba Botchway
Executive Director of Admissions
& Financial Aid
Prior to her role at Ashesi, Araba worked as the Program Officer for the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP) in West Africa for a period of 12 years. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in French with Spanish from the University of Ghana, a post graduate diploma in Marketing of Services from the Maastricht School of Management (Netherlands), an Executive MBA from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, a certificate in Management of Higher Education Institutions from the Galilee College (Israel), and a certificate in Project Management from Syncom Business Intelligence (South Africa).
Abdul Mahdi
Dean of Students & Community Affairs
Prior to Ashesi, Abdul was the Director of Full-time and Professional MBA Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Champaign. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an MBA from Governor State University in Illinois. Abdul has 15+ years’ experience in designing, forecasting, marketing and implementing programs to yield results in corporate and non-for profit sectors and 13 years of experience in higher education working with a diverse population of faculty, staff and students.
Yasmin Bucknor
Chief Operating Officer
Yasmin holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and International Relations from Cornell University, and an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. She began her career in the financial services industry in New York as an investment banker at Société Generale where she focused on asset-based finance. After her MBA, she worked as a director in corporate finance at American Express.
Yasmin is passionate about non-profit management and making an impact in the lives of African youth. Prior to joining Ashesi, she was the Chief Operations Officer at IkamvaYouth, a South African non-profit focused on empowering disadvantaged youth through education, where she helped scale the organization's student reach threefold. Yasmin grew up in the Ivory Coast and is fluent in French.
Ebenezer G. Buckman
Chief of Staff to the President & Director of University Communications
Since 2011, Ebenezer has worked across various roles and projects at Ashesi including marketing & communications, fundraising, stakeholder & alumni relations, campus development, and finance. He first joined Ashesi as Alumni and Public Relations Officer and helped shape the University's communication, alumni and public relations infrastructure.
Prior to his current role, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Director of External Relations, leading and providing essential support for critical initiatives across the University. He has also served as Secretary to the Board of Directors and works closely with the Ashesi University Foundation on global fundraising.
He holds a bachelor's degree in Management Information Systems from Ashesi University, and was a Middle East and Africa Talent scholarship recipient at IE Business School, where he earned his master's degree in Corporate Communications.