Ela-vating the Entrepreneurship Mindset with Sarah Osman

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

This week in our continuing Women’s Herstory Month series, we’re in another new country--from southern Africa last week we’re landing in Scandinavia on our first trip to Norway via Sudan, Zambia, The Philippines, Netherlands, Ghana and South Africa--all places my guest this week has called home. Sarah Osman is a cognitive psychologist, global development specialist, and social entrepreneur with twenty years of experience across Europe, Africa, and Asia. Born in Khartoum, Sudan, and shaped by a life lived across multiple continents, she has built her career at the intersection of applied behavioral science and international development, helping major organizations translate insights about human decision-making into programs that create lasting social change.

As the founder of Osman Advisory Services, Sarah has worked with international organizations such as the Council of Europe, World Vision, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union on some of the most complex behavioral challenges in global development.

In 2024, she founded Ela, a membership community for women of color building their own consulting practices. Ela is grounded in the conviction that structural inequity in the consulting sector cannot be solved by individual effort alone: it requires community, peer accountability, and the kind of behavioral design thinking that Sarah has spent two decades applying in the field. Ela members are already experiencing tangible transformation in how they position themselves and grow with confidence.

Sarah is currently building a new platform for Africa-focused professionals who want to harness the power of behavioral and consumer insights in their work and sector.

Currently based in Oslo, Sarah is a true ‘glocal’ citizen: Sudanese by heritage, Pan-African by spirit, European by dwelling, and wholly at home in the space between local realities and global systems.

Where to find Sarah and her resource offerings?
osmanadvisoryservices.com
Join the Ela Membership
Sign up to the Pattern Recognition Newsletter
On LinkedIn
On YouTube

What’s Sarah reading?
Credit Alert by Ayo Akinola
We Are Not Consumers by Louis Seeco

What’s Sarah listening to?
The Department Podcast

Other topics of interest:
Perspectives on Black Identity in Norway
Curious about “Delulu” thinking?
Manal Sayid of Sayid Consulting