Organizing Committee

Ishmael Yamson
Founder, CEO, Yamson & Associates
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Mr. Ishmael Yamson is the Founder and CEO of Yamson & Associates, a Business Development Consulting firm.  He is also the non-executive Chairman of both Unilever Ghana Limited and Standard Chartered Bank, Ghana Limited.  Mr. Yamson was the CEO of Unilever Ghana Limited for 18 years.  During his tenure he transformed the company from a conglomerate business with interests in trading, power generation, motors, textiles, and brewing, into a focused, fast moving consumer goods company with backward integration into major raw materials on an alliance basis.  He is now a founding and council member of the Centre for Policy Analysis and the Chairman of the Governance Committee of the Commonwealth Business Council.  Mr. Yamson has also served as President of the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, President of the Ghana Employers’ Association and founding member and President of the Private Enterprise Foundation.

Prior to becoming Chief Executive for Unilever Ghana, Mr. Yamson spent 20 years working in senior management of Unilever companies in the UK, Holland and Africa. He held positions that include Chief Executive of Ghana Textile Printing/Juapong Textiles and of Gailey & Roberts in Tanzania, and Marketing Executive for the Kumasi Brewery and for Bird’s Eye Walls in the UK.  He has a BSc. in Economics from the University of Ghana. He is married to Lucy with 5 children.

As a renowned leader and Chief Executive, Ishmael Yamson has received numerous local and international awards.  Some of his honors include the Order of the Volta (Civil Division), Fellow of both the Ghana Institute of Marketing and Institute of Management, an Honorary Doctorate degree from the University of Ghana, Member of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Conference, and Honorary Member for the Global Coalition for Africa.

Ken Ofori-Atta
Executive Chairman, Co-founder, Databank Financial Services Ltd.
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Ken Ofori-Atta is the Executive Chairman and Co-founder of Databank Financial Services Limited (Ghana). Databank is an Investment Banking firm providing corporate finance, stockbrokerage, asset management, private equity and research services, and was established in Ghana in 1990 with $25,000 in seed capital.  Databank’s affiliated companies have since acquired significant interests in an insurance company in Ghana, a commercial bank in The Gambia, and several real estate assets.  Databank Brokerage has become the leading stockbrokerage firm in Ghana, while Databank Asset Management offers the most successful Pan African mutual fund product, EPACK, in Africa.  Mr. Ofori-Atta is a Director for several private and publicly listed companies and he is the Chairman of The Trust Bank of The Gambia.

Prior to co-founding Databank, Mr. Ofori-Atta worked with Morgan Stanley and Salomon Brothers in New York.  He is a graduate of the Achimota School in Ghana, he has a BA in Economics from Columbia University (’84), and an MBA from the Yale School of Management (’88).  He is married to Angela and has three children. 

Mr. Ofori-Atta was the first African Fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Henry Crown Leadership programme and is the co-founder and chairman of the Aspen affiliated Africa Leadership Initiative in Ghana (ALI).  He has been honored as a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum of Davos.  He is also a member of the President of Ghana’s Investors’ Advisory Council and a member of TechnoServe International.

Tony Oteng-Gyasi
Managing Director, Tropical Cable and Conductor Limited
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Tony Oteng-Gyasi is the Founder and Managing Director of Tropical Cable & Conductor Ltd. (TCCL), a manufacturing company of electric and telecommunications cables.  TCCL is the only wholly Ghanaian owned cable manufacturing company in the country, and is ISO 9001: 2000 certified.  Mr. Oteng-Gyasi is also the president of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), and a member of the Council of the Ghana Stock Exchange, and the Council of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA). He has served two terms as the Vice President of the Ghana Furniture Producers Association.
  
Prior to founding TCCL, Mr. Oteng-Gyasi worked with the Ghana Operation of British Petroleum and the Bank of Ghana for several years.  More recently, he has founded and run multiple enterprises, including Tropical Products Limited, which became the largest manufacturer of wooden crates and pallets in Ghana.  Due to Mr. Oteng-Gyasi’s concerns about the environmental impact of the production of wood products, he chose to cease production and re-channel his entrepreneurial pursuits into his current business.  Mr. Oteng-Gyasi was called to the Ghana Bar in 1989.  He has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Ghana, and a Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, United Kingdom (UK).  He is married to Barbara with five children.

In 2005 Mr. Oteng-Gyasi was named Marketing Man of the Year and the Indutech outstanding personality in the electrical sector.  In 2001, his company was judged the fastest growing Empretec Client Company and was short-listed for the Shell Award for sustainable development by the Worldaware Institute.  He also earned the Empretec Star Award for Entrepreneurial Achievement in 2000.

Grace Amey-Obeng
Managing Director, FC Group of Companies
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Grace Amey-Obeng is the Managing Director of the FC Group of Companies.  She is also a Paramedical Aesthetician, who has distinguished herself as a pioneer in the field of skin and body treatments in Ghana. Mrs. Amey-Obeng has grown FC from a Cosmetic Retail Shop to a conglomerate which now includes FC Skin & Beauty Clinics, FC Cosmetics Industry, FC Perfumery & Cosmetics, and FC Institute of Beauty Therapy, the premier beauty therapy training institute in Ghana, accredited by the Ghana Education Service and affiliated with City & Guilds of London.  Mrs. Amey-Obeng has also developed Beauty Scope Magazine, the most recent branch of the FC Group, into the only magazine in Ghana devoted to women’s issues.  Mrs. Amey-Obeng is the Vice President of Ghana Association of Beauty Therapists, a member of Professional Cosmetology Association of Ghana, Local Examiner for City and Guilds of London International, and the Financial Controller of Ghana Skin Foundation. Mrs. Amey-Obeng studied Beauty Therapy at Croydon College, UK and obtained a Diploma in Beauty Therapy from Profile Aesthetics Institute, UK. She also studied Paramedic Aesthetics at the Aesthetic Research Institute in the US.  She has several advanced certificates from the Newlands Hospital, England and regularly joins refresher courses at the Alan Roy Aesthetics Institute and the Skin Science College in South Africa. She is married to Mr. Johnson Obeng with three children, all of whom work with her to help make the FC Group a successful family business. 

In 1996 and 2000 Mrs. Amey-Obeng was the first and only Ghanaian woman to receive recognition as a “Dynamic Flying Angel of Sales” and “Queen of Sales” from the Mary Kay Corporation.  She was the 2002 Marketing Woman of the Year and the International Biographical Center’s 21st Century Award for Achievement.  That year she also received a Certificate of Achievement from the South African Skin Science College.

Patrick G. Awuah, Jr.
Founder and President, Ashesi University
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Patrick Awuah is the Founder and President of Ashesi University, a private undergraduate institution that has quickly gained an excellent reputation for innovation and quality education in Ghana. The university, which began instruction in March 2002, is modeled after Swarthmore and has principal strengths in business, economics and computer science. The key characteristic that defines Ashesi students is leadership potential, an institutional norm that is evidenced by the fact that a team of Ashesi students won the Standard Chartered Bank Innovation Incubator competition in 2005.  Ashesi’s unique learning environment, high quality lecturers and acclaimed advisory board makes it an exemplary model for private sector education in Ghana.   

Prior to founding Ashesi, Mr. Awuah served for eight years as a Program Manager in the Business Systems Division of Microsoft Corporation, where, among other things, he spearheaded the development of dial-up internetworking technologies and gained a reputation for bringing difficult projects to completion.  He holds bachelor degrees in Engineering and Economics from Swarthmore College, and an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.  He is married to Rebecca with two children.

In 2004, Swarthmore awarded Mr. Awuah an honorary doctorate in recognition of his leadership in African higher education.  He is a fellow of the Africa Leadership Initiative, a partnership between the Aspen Institute, Databank, and TechnoServe. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Tau Beta Pi national Honor Society for Excellence in Engineering.

Nick Railston-Brown
Country Director, TechnoServe Ghana
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Nick Railston-Brown joined TechnoServe in 1999 as the Ghana Country Director. TechnoServe is an international non-profit organization that works to build businesses that create jobs, income, opportunity and economic growth in developing countries. The organization’s strategy is market-driven and business-oriented. Much of Mr. Railston-Brown’s work in Ghana has focused on conducting industry-specific market research and analyses, identifying high-value agribusiness opportunities, and establishing new and productive market linkages.

Prior to joining TechnoServe Mr. Railston-Brown garnered over 20 years of experience in commercial agribusiness both in the developed and the developing world.  He spent six years in senior management positions in Zambia where he successfully turned around Zambia’s largest private soyabean processing company, developed a range of animal feed products that secured 20-25% market share, and lead the agency to becoming a pioneer in the distribution of high yielding hybrid seeds.  Mr. Railston-Brown has a BSC in Agriculture from Newcastle University, MSC in Agronomy from Harper Adams College, and an MBA from Cranfield School of management.  He has three children.

In recent years Mr. Railston-Brown has forged relationships with local, international and multinational corporate partners to facilitate private sector growth through the promotion and development of entrepreneurship and small and medium enterprises.  He is a member of the SAGE (Student’s for the Advancement for Global Entrepreneurship) Global Advisory Board.  Mr. Railston-Brown helped bring one of the first ever Google Foundation grants to Ghana.  He is instrumental in the introduction of Believe Begin Become, Ghana’s national business plan competition, a comprehensive entrepreneurship development programme.

Essie Anno Sackey
Country Manager, British Airways
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