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August 15, 2024 65 mins

WHAT TO EXPECT...WHEN YOU PUSH PLAY

Your host, Kondwani Mwase, talks to the accomplished Dr. Yabome Gilpin-Jackson to discuss her inspiring journey from Sierra Leone to Canada, and her impactful work in equity, diversity, and inclusion. Yabome shares profound insights on navigating complex systems, finding home in community, and the importance of everyday African leaders. Join them for a thought-provoking conversation that will leave you motivated to create positive change.

LEAN IN, LISTEN UP...AND LEARN

  • Yabome's multicultural upbringing across three continents shaped her heightened consciousness and passion for social justice and human dignity.
  • Leaving Sierra Leone during the war and experiencing the complexities of inequity first hand fuelled Yabome's dedication to systems change and equity-centred work.
  • Yabome emphasises the importance of understanding complexity and flexing methodologies based on context when working in organisational development and social systems change.
  • SLD Consulting Inc., founded by Yabome, serves as an ongoing action research lab, keeping her connected to challenges and solutions across sectors.
  • We Will Lead Africa, co-founded by Yabome, showcases everyday African leaders making a difference in their communities, challenging the narrow narrative of leadership on the continent.
  • Yabome believes in the power of small, incremental changes to create lasting impact and the importance of staying hopeful while acknowledging the realities of inequity.
  • Finding a sense of home in one's communities and being able to be one's authentic self is crucial for Yabome.
  • Yabome's journey highlights the interconnectedness of her diverse roles and the manifestation of her long-held dreams of being an organisational development consultant, lecturer, and community development advocate.  

OUR HIGHs (NO LOWs)

“Fundamentally, I've always been social justice minded. My mom has stories for days about me insisting we should stop the car and give somebody that seems destitute a hand."

"The joy of this work is being able to identify systems, challenges, and bring the discipline of processes to help us unpack and understand those challenges in a way that allows us to look for solutions that are lasting."  

"We Will Lead Africa is here to collect and document these stories of everyday leaders in every sector across the continent, on or off the continent, that are doing work for the continent with marginalized communities that is making a difference already."

"Nothing is ever lost. Even the effort in creating it, and this moment that we're talking about it, nothing is lost. It brings it back to life."

"When I'm in a group of people where I can just be me completely and freely, and I don't have to navigate between spaces, which I know how to do, like I said, I learned from my mother. But when I can be truly, truly, truly unmasked, then I'm home."

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