Meet Elizabeth Maame Esi Ewudiwa, a 24-year-old Ghanaian certified Associate Human Resource Practitioner, writer, and public speaker. She was the only African scholar, receiving a full scholarship to Harvard University for the Harvard Project for Asia and International Relations (HPAIR 2020) held in Boston, USA, where she participated in various case studies such as the UNHCR Sahel Region crisis and the Indonesian energy sector as a Global Markets & Economy delegate.
She is the author of the African anthology “The Woman in Me” available on Amazon and the President of Elidiaries Foundation, a child & youth development-focused initiative. She works at Delft Imaging, a medical imaging company, and is the former Head of People & Culture & HR Manager at AMS Digital Solutions (formerly called All Media Solutions), a digital marketing agency.
Elizabeth is a member and HR Marketing consultant at the HR Network Africa and an Alumnus of the New Business Challenge organized by the Ghana-Netherlands Business & Cultural Council (GNBCC) and Sustainable Motion -NL.
As a writer, many of her works have been published across the world including the trending “HR as Marketers” and “Building a profitable training culture” with a collaboration with an Academic Educator under Harvard Business Review and Lecturer at Primeasia University in Dhaka, Bangladesh, available on the Business & Financial Times.
As a social entrepreneur and public speaker with a passion for children, youth and education, Elizabeth is a Diplomatic Fellow at the Federation of International Gender & Human Rights (FIGHR), New York, USA, on the track of Gender & Sexual-Based Violence (S/GBV) and Maternal Care Crisis Management. She was the delegate of Ghana in the 2019 Global Model United Nations held in Thailand on the Quality Education forum for SDG4 with over 100 delegates from more than 20 countries across Asia, Europe, Africa, South & North America, where she won the Most Outstanding Delegate Award.
She graduated from Central University (class of 2018) with Bsc. in Business Administration (Human Resource Management option) with a summa cauma Laude GPA of 4.0 out of 4.0, emerging as the Chancellor Award recipient (overall best student), Best female student, and best lHRM student, winning a full scholarship with the Chartered Institute of HR Practitioners for the Professional Certification Programme. This ceremony held 3 years ago earned her the nickname “Elizabeth 4.0” and coloured the nation’s Daily Graphic with the prolific headline “When Maame Esi Scored a Hat-trick”.
As a current student at Illinois State University, this passionate Gen Z’er is blazing the trail with life-transforming projects such as the Bundle of Pages annual outreach to build/equip libraries in rural schools, through her organization, Elidiaries Foundation. About striving to make an indelible impact the following is what she has to say:
“I am a young girl who believes in the vision of a brighter Africa, a better world and I believe in what I can do about it, so I start.
The journey of life for me has been a ride in the faithfulness of God. I am not yet where I should be, but neither am I where I started. Another thing I will tell my friends is that when you don’t find the resources you need, volunteer, you’ll find peace and gradually, what you need.
In the long term, I aspire to be a versatile HR & legal expert, marketing consultant, and social entrepreneur. Three things inspire me, human resource development, Arts (Writing & Public Speaking), and education.
At age 13 I had my first major achievement as a member of the Lagos state children’s parliament where I represented the capital city constituency, for 3 years. On this platform was my first trip outside the country to South Africa on a government fully sponsored leadership training. Young, but this was the beginning of leadership and personal development for me. At age 16, I had my first job as a home tutor. I taught English and mathematics to 4 Asian kids at the British Deputy High Commission. They employed me for this because they thought the kids would relate better to a younger person like myself. On 2 occasions, I acted as a babysitter for Huda and Zaki to earn more money.
I graduated from high school in 2013 with only a glimmer of hope for continuing my education. After many unsuitable offers, I got a full scholarship to study Journalism, Psychology & English in India for 3 years which I declined because I had a bigger desire and due to security reasons as a teenager. Lesson number 1, God works in mysterious ways.He brought help throughout my education, somehow and through people who barely knew me.
In 2017, my mother left me. It was the darkest night of my life. She had been sick for months and maybe even a year. I saw my mum grow lean suddenly. I returned from school after a vacation to see my jovial mother who loved me so much and had sacrificed everything for my survival, I saw her dying. But faith told me she would be fine. There were nights I stood next to her and shed tears till my eyes got swollen. I prayed to God on the darkest nights begging that He should heal her. She was just not well, and we could not tell what was wrong,but I spoke hope, I promised her God is alive and He would heal.
When she died, I was disappointed. I grew cold to hope, I hated the thought of hope. I was angry. I was broken. She passed on 2 weeks to my 20th birthday. I still remember the battles in my closed-door prayers. 2 weeks of seclusion and God completely transformed my anger into compassion and my hatred to love. I loved God. I knew something I never knew about this Great God. I got to know that thing we hear every time which we may not fully understand – GOD IS GREAT. GOD IS SOVEREIGN. GOD IS GOOD. HE LOVES YOU! In my final year, I had to combine school and work to earn some more money.
Lesson two, God is in control. Lesson three, life is a journey so never think your present state will be your future. Lesson 4, God, you, and your purpose in life are the 3 most important things that exist.
I am not the girl I was. I have had 24 years of twists and turns. I had sorrow and I had joy. I had disappointments and I have been favoured. I had failures and I had success, and I am a work in progress in God’s mighty and able hands.
This story is dedicated to appreciating the great works of God in the lives of His children, especially those of us who lost hope and felt cheated by life. This piece is to the “cheers” of those people on whose backs we travelled this long road of success, but they left along the way because fate did not permit them to continue. May their memories stay alive, and may their impact thrive.
My closing remark to you is that whilst you are tempted to feel cheated or compare yourself to another, remember that we are in the same race, but we run different tracks. I am Elizabeth, the girl saved by grace and love by the greatest King. Let us catch up at the top! That is where survivors live.
On this note, I’ll invite you to support my educational project -the bundle of pages.”
Connect to Elizabeth via elizabethewudiwa@gmail.com
