From Lusaka to Toronto — and back to the village.
One of five girls, raised by an incredible single dad, powered by a village that believed in me before I could believe in myself. This is how the work got here.
I was born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia — one of five girls, raised by an incredible single dad after losing my mom at ten. We didn't grow up with much. When I finished high school, a neighbor won a scholarship to the U.S. and, for the first time, studying abroad felt possible for a girl like me.
My stepmom laughed when I said I'd get a scholarship. So I printed my results and walked into every embassy in Longacres, knocking on gates. The Japanese Embassy called me back — I taught myself enough Japanese to sit the exam, and I failed. But in making myself visible, I met Michael, a Zambian student at the University of Toronto, who helped me apply for the MasterCard Foundation scholarship. I won $500,000. Michael paid for my visa. He's been my friend ever since.
Toronto didn't welcome me easily. I nearly got kicked out on academic probation — not because I wasn't smart, but because the room wasn't built for me. Then I read Dr. Tara Yosso on Community Cultural Wealth: the aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistant capital that marginalized communities already carry. I recognized every one of them in myself and in my people.
My work today — GRANTED, Okwera Academy, Okwera Village, The Third Place, Black in Nature — is that framework put to work. Turning the capital communities already have into the capital the world will actually fund.
Watch me tell it myself.
A long-form talk on cultural capital, funding equity, and why the village always wins.
Everything orbits midwifery.
Six commitments circle one center: the practice of bringing purpose safely into the world. Companies, villages, communities — they all get born the same way.
Midwifery
The center of everything I do — providing the resources, knowledge, and rooms where another person's dream can be safely delivered into the world.
Co-Creation
I don't build alone and I don't build for. I build with. Every venture in this ecosystem was made in partnership with the people it serves.
Nature Stewardship
Human beings are extensions of nature. To steward the land is to steward the people, and vice versa.
The Village
Servant leadership expressed through villages — physical, digital, rural, diasporic — where people are held, taught, and returned to themselves.
Ubuntu
I am because we are. My success is only real when it is shared, and my leadership is only whole when it lifts others.
Servant Leadership
I lead by resourcing. Authority is only worthwhile when it is used to open doors, fund dreams, and make room for others.