Dr. Esi Ansah – an experienced corporate trainer, entrepreneur, and long-serving member of Ashesi’s Business faculty – will become the new Executive Director spearheading the creation of the University’s Centre for Leadership. The Centre, an important part of Ashesi’s third-decade strategic plan, will build transformative executive education experiences for leaders and professionals across various sectors - public, private, social, and academic - that empower them to lead and sustain impactful work and organisations. In addition, the Centre will provide support for growth in new and existing initiatives, including our planned Master's in Business Administration, Law with Public Policy undergraduate programme, and the Education Collaborative at Ashesi.
Dr. Ansah first joined Ashesi in 2008 as a full-time lecturer after earning her PhD. Since then, she has taught courses in leadership, human resources, organisational behaviour, negotiations, and creative problem-solving. She transitioned into an adjunct lecturer role in 2017 to build two organisations she founded: Axis Human Capital, a human resources consultancy firm, and the Association of Ghana’s Elders (AGE), an organisation that supports ageing with dignity.
As an adjunct, she continued to teach undergraduate classes, led management training for university employees and senior leaders, and serves as a lead facilitator for a public health leadership programme we run in partnership with the World Health Organization.
"The Ashesi journey so far has targeted students," shared Dr. Esi Ansah. "And a lot of the lessons that I bring to this role are really around understanding education, training, and learning from the view of executives. The value of Executive Education at Ashesi is being able to take our transformative student experience to managers, start-up leaders, and professionals, and giving them the agency to grow their impact."
Dr. Ansah holds a PhD in Public Administration from Rutgers University, an M.S. in Public Service Management from DePaul University, an M.A. in Social Science from the University of Chicago, and B.A. degrees in Psychology, International Affairs, and French from Florida State University. She is also a certified International Coaching Federation (ICF) Coach and a licensed Insights® Discovery practitioner.
