We were lucky to catch up with Florence Amerley Adu recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Florence Amerley , appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
When I was six years old, a first generation child of Ghanaian immigrants, I sat in a first grade classroom filled with a diversity of students from all sorts of national, ethnic and economic backgrounds. This was thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the nature of a newly urbanizing city. I grew up in Denver, Colorado in a fairly naturally mixed-income community of people of color and working-class whites. Students from new communities of mostly middle and upper middle class white families were bused in. My two teachers were white women. I have distinct memories of both alternately overlooking my academic potential and reprimanding my way of enquiry and curiosity. I was a well-behaved child of over-achieving immigrants so I was definitely not a disciplinary problem; but, I knew I could be challenged and achieve more than they allowed. It didn’t change my effort and I hadn’t connected the dot that a dark-skinned African girl was not meant to excel in the company of rich blond white girls. I felt unseen and I felt that way until 4th grade when we moved and I changed schools and encountered a teacher who finally saw me and my gifts. However, up until the move and after, it did not change my level of effort or belief in my me-ness. I have a confident, loving, proudly African mother to thank for this. With her support and the fear of disappointing either of my parents, I learned to take care of business and get it done, despite.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am a Ghanaian-American based in Accra, Ghana and Brooklyn, New York. I am the daughter of immigrants who were among the first post-colonial Ghanaians to migrate to Denver, Colorado in the late 1960s. Using my parents as a model along with the synergy of our collective hopes and dreams, I’ve designed a bi-continental lifestyle that lead me to founding LEAP Transmedia Productions, a content development and production company based in Accra. LEAP, an acronym for Learning, Education, Arts and People, is an expression of my passion for seeding and sowing a vision for improving education and economic outcomes for Ghanaians and Africans across the Diaspora. By nurturing future minds with foundational learning, thought provoking audiovisual experiences and accessible technologies, LEAP is driven by content creation targeting Pan-African children and families. I’m excited about embarking on a new challenge creating alternate pathways to knowledge through a Pan-African micro-school curriculum. African children experiencing public school classrooms continue to suffer their history because the legacy education systems are designed for colonial priorities not the lifestyle and learning needs of African children today. Our curriculum empowers communities to supplement and, in some cases, bypass inadequate teaching and learning materials.
This spirit of activism is also a thread in the purpose and production of the Glocal Citizens Podcast. December 2024 marks five years for the weekly “podcast that inspires a borderless mindset around manifesting a new world.” A business and lifestyle program, earlier this year, I launched a salon series with the aim of “solutionscaping” around the future of work. So far we tackled care of the aging at the New York event and agriculture at the London event. The next session will be in Accra in December. The topic will be revealed at the event. The long-term goal of these activations is to create a library of solutions that individuals and communities can build on and apply to solve challenges that they are passionate about.
I am also Managing Director of ArgoAdu LLC, a project management company. A family enterprise, our portfolio includes real estates, construction and property management projects in Denver, New York and Accra. I’ve spent a significant part of my career focusing on community and economic development; merging my interest in improving the built environment with my technical background, a highlight of my accomplishments is facilitating the development of over one million square feet of commercial, residential and institutional space across New York City’s five boroughs. The built and not so built environment is increasingly drawing my attention to a long-term goal in farming. Cultivating the land is earth’s gift to humans, we have a responsibility to remember that this stewardship is a collective endeavor.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Qualities and skills I believe are important: 1) Pay attention to the details. Being detail oriented does wonders for the quality of your outputs.
2) Travel, network, curate professional and social activities that feed your interests and intellect.
3) Spend time alone. Think, breathe and reflect often.
Advice that I can offer…
1) Get used to being useful. There will be times when you know and feel that you’re being used. Flip the switch on these incidents by empowering yourself to own the fact that you are a useful contributor regardless of the intentions of the recipient of your usefulness
2) Stay curious.
3) Take notes. Moments of inspiration hit all the time. Record a voice note, jot down key words, whatever, just know that the power of recall is best harnessed in documentation.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
There are a couple of books that have been particularly meaningful in to me as a storyteller in recent years. <i>Parable of the Sower</i> by Octavia E. Butler because it reinforced the notion that my greatest tool for activism is to tell stories that inspire young minds to imaging futures that solve today’s problem. That is why I gravitate toward speculative fiction and afro-futuristic works. The other is <i>Atlas Shrugged</i> by Ayn Rand. I first read it about three years ago and recently re-read it because the female protagonist is the kind of badass that is going to change the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://glocalcitizens.fireside.fm/
- Instagram: @flirtyflo @glocalcitizens
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/florenceamerleyadu/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GlocalCitizens
Image Credits
Kwame Acheampong (studio images 4,5,6,7)
