The Everyday Leader podcast features inspiring individuals building and leading teams across Africa. Listen to episodes on your preferred podcast platform here.
About our Guest
This episode’s conversation is with Nelly Agyemang-Gyamfi. Nelly is an educational leader who is passionate about unlocking human potential through the provision of quality and effective educational experiences and has spent the last 7-8 years building and growing programs and educational institutions to enable this. She holds an M.A. in Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology from Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development.
Nelly has spent her career working in different educational contexts with different demographics ranging from toddlers to company executives. She currently serves as Group Director of Operations at Moringa School where she provides strategic leadership and oversight of operations including strategy development and implementation, course quality, innovation and impact and human resource and financial management.
She is particularly excited about the opportunity technology presents for the future of work and is working with Moringa School to build talent and opportunities through transformative, tech-based learning experiences.
Everyday Leadership in Action
Here are a few highlights from the conversation with Nelly:
Self-awareness comes from needing to intentionally set goals and identify guiding values: Nelly held several leadership roles during her college years that required that she look after and guide younger students when they arrived on campus for their first year. This experience was a lightbulb moment for her as it helped build self-awareness as she had to be intentional about setting her goals and values in this role.
Building a reputation of getting things done will position you well when opportunities arise: Nelly was selected as a Country Director at Moringa School after performing well in her first role and taking on a deputy role, demonstrating that she can learn quickly and navigate challenges professionally while in middle management roles during turbulent times.
Transitioning from middle management to upper management requires a switch to leading through influence: During her early roles, Nelly said she felt more direct control of her team’s day-to-day operations. When she reached upper management, she found that she had more of a say in what the goal or outcome she be, but much less say in how exactly the team would achieve it. Instead she had to leverage experts and middle management within the organization to develop informed strategies whereby the implementers would have sufficient buy-in around the strategy.
The Everyday Leader is a podcast featuring conversations with leaders from across Africa’s companies, organizations, and governments about their experience managing teams and projects throughout their careers.
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Nelly Agyemang-Gyamfi: Group Director of Operations, Moringa School