Every March since launching the podcast, we dedicate the month to women - it’s our Women's Herstory Month series. Closing out this year’s series are excerpts from conversations over the years with Glocal Citizens working to empower, develop, support and uplift women in Africa and beyond.

We’ll hear social development scholar, author and facilitator, Yaliwe Clarke discussing her craft and how feminism has always been native to her being. Nana Eyeson-Akiwowo shares how her NGO, African Health Now inspired the innovative fourthphase box solving for the unspoken and overlooked needs of women postpartum. Daisry Obal tells us how her work in policy informed and inspired her to build the Oyayone Foundation dedicated to transforming Namibia one mother at a time. With a passion for building solutions that matter, Tiambi Simms, co-founder of social enterprise, SheFarms shares what her guiding question, “How are we going to feed 9.7 billion people by 2050?” means in practice. And Aissata Sidibé N'dia, president and founding member of Yelenba-Women in Action shares how their concrete actions approach has been impactful in supporting African women and girls to help themselves to improve their daily lives. In case you missed the full episodes, check out the links below.
In these monumental times we are traversing, I leave you with these thoughts as you “listenandlearn:
"You are the author of your own story. Write it boldly, rewrite it fearlessly, and inspire others with every chapter."

Where to find Yaliwe?
Episode 214

Where to find Nana?
Episodes 42 and 43

Where to find Daisry?
Episode 134

Where to find Tiambi?
Episode 142

Where to find Aissata?
Episode 59

Special Guests: Aissata Sidibe N’Dia, Daisry Obal, Nana Eyeson-Akiwowo, Tiambi Simms, and Yaliwe Clarke.

This week on the podcast, rather than one last guest rounding out our March 2023 herstories series, I went into our archives with a specific goal of putting together a salon of sorts about craft. I think of craft as how vocation, location, persistence and passion fulfill us. According to Merriam-Webster, it is skill in planning, making, or executing.

I always ask this question because I feel it allows my guest to share more than what they do on a day-to-day basis for economic returns i.e. work, and gets closer to the heart of who they are and how they go about manifesting a new world. So, this week we’re re-visiting with:

• Jamaican-American, Nydia Swaby a Black feminist researcher, writer, and curator based in London about Archives, Art and Freedom Dreams;

• Filipino-Jamaican-American, Zee Clarke an author, mindfulness practitioner and racial healing professional about Healing in Breathing;

• Ghanaian-Afro-German, Ekua Yankah a thought leader in international development on being a Polyglot, Professor, Policy Advisor and Art Patron;

• Ghanaian-Brit, Esther Armah an author, journalist and entrepreneur on storytelling for structural change;

• Nigerian, Sarah Adeyinka a humanitarian researcher and author on Humanitarian CoCreating; and

• and Detroit Native, Dereca Blackmon an inclusion innovator, speaker and spiritual activist about Uncommon Conversations.

Be sure to check out full episodes using the links above, there’s a wealth of valuable, craft-inspired insights from each of these audacious women!

Special Guests: Dereca Blackmon, Ekua Yankah, Esther Armah, Nydia Swaby, Sarah Adeyinka, and Zhalisa "Zee" Clarke.

This week’s herstory comes to us from southern Africa. We’re exploring Zambia in a big way, especially the role that women have played in forward movement in the country. My guest is award-winning journalist, communications specialist and cultural curator, Samba Yonga. She is Founder and Head Communications Strategist at Ku-Atenga Media and co-founder of the Women’s History Museum of Zambia, established in 2017, with the mandate to research and restore African indigenous narratives, knowledge and 'living histories' focused on women. She has curated exhibitions and written papers focused on indigenous African knowledge systems and narratives in Zambia but also for art spaces, museums and universities such as National Musuems of World Cultures in Sweden, Yale University in USA, Windybrow Centre in South Africa and many others. In fact, she joined me in conversation just as she was headed to Shanghai University to present her works in the museum space at Museums, Decolonisation and Restitution: A Global Conversation.

Samba has been recognized as 100 most influential Africans by Quartz, New York, and one of 40 most influential Africans. She is also a Google Podcast Creator, TEDx Lusaka speaker and a Museum Lab Fellow for 2022. It’s always a treat to connect with other podcasters and after you have a listen, be sure to head over to the museum’s Youtube channel to check out the Leading Ladies animated podcast!

Where to find Samba?
www.whmzambia.org
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
On Twitter
On YouTube

What’s Samba reading?
Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman by Malidoma Patrice Some
491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69 by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Wallpaper Magazine
Vanity Fair Magazine

What’s Samba watching?
Luther on Netflix
Chef’s Table on Netflix
East Asian Dramas on Netflix

What’s Samba listening to?
Ratchet & Respectable Podcast
The Comb on BBC
Hidden Brain Podcast
The Moth Podcast
Selam & Hello Podcast

Other topics of interest:
The Old Drift: A Novel by Namwali Serpell
Lusaka, Zambia
About Trendsetters Magazine
On Settler Societies
Glocally Speaking in Zambian Languages
Mass Design Group
Third Culture Kids

Special Guest: Samba Yonga.

This week’s herstory comes to us from New York, via France, Benin and Nigeria. Yasmina F. Edwards, born in France, and spending summers traveling to Africa including her homelands in Benin and Nigeria, is the founder of the YFE Agency. In both corporate work and entrepreneurship, Yasmina is best known for her cultural awareness and savvy. She has worked with award-winning creatives, activists, and CEOs, notably women and members of underrepresented communities. She has secured more than 300 media placements globally from CNN, Vogue, Le Figaro, Jeune Afrique, MSNBC, and the Hollywood Reporter, as well as partnering with well-known Festivals such as the Toronto Film Festival and Afropunk.

In nine years, she has been instrumental in helping transition creatives and public personalities from their local markets to a global audience. She single-handedly helps them build their brands in the US using social media platforms, shaping their messages in order to connect with new audiences. She provides connections with the relationships she’s built over the years and uses these connections to successfully initiate key brand partnerships that continue to be the cornerstone of her work and her clients’ careers. She firmly believes that access is what stands between a person and an opportunity; she is committed to providing the keys that open the doors to her clients' success.

Where to find Yasmina?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
On YouTube
On TikTok

What’s Yasmina reading?
Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change by Stacey Abrahms
No Disrespect by Sistah Souljah
Le Cri de L'innocence by Gabriel Soulyeka

What’s Yasmina listening to?
The Diary of a CEO
3jaj Podcast

Other topics of interest:
Where is Poitier, France
Oyo Empire
The Berlin Conference
Bigger Than Africa
Iman

Special Guest: Yasmina Fagbemi.

ICMYI it's Women’s History Month! As is our tradition here on the podcast, all month we’re featuring herstories of women moving and shaking around the world. This week, my guest is a Global Ghanaian based in Los Angeles, California. Alua Arthur is a death doula, recovering attorney, and the founder of Going with Grace, a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization that exists to support people as they answer the question, “What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully?” Going with Grace works to improve and redefine the end-of-life experience for people rooted in every community using the individual lived experience as the foundation. Alua was a keynote speaker at EndWell 2019 and featured in the LA Times, Vogue, Refinery29, The Doctors, and InStyle. She is inspired by the gift of LIFE itself and is always on the quest for the best donuts and fried plantains!

This conversation offers so much in terms of not only insight into the work that is Alua’s professional calling, but it is also an opportunity for listeners to consider what is often a difficult topic as a truly expansive experience.

Where to find Alua?
www.goingwithgrace.com
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
On Twitter
On YouTube

What’s Alua reading?
Grit and Grace: Uncommon Wisdom for Inspiring Leaders Designed to Make You Think

What’s Alua watching?
Love after Lock-up
90 Day Fiancé

Other topics of interest:
Hilla Limann
Leimert Park
National End-of-Life Doula Alliance
The Art of Death Midwifery Training
Burkitt’s Lymphoma
Everyday People and DJ Moma
Limitless with Chris Hemsworth

Special Guest: Alua Arthur.

In her creative approach to knowledge production, she uses archives, ethnography, photography, film, and the imagination to curate programs and visual narratives, write essays and performance pieces exploring the gendered and diasporic dimensions of Black being and becoming. She also creates ancestral altars using family pictures and memorabilia, found photographs and archival images, West African textiles and wood carvings, crystals, fossils, stones, shells, and other curios. These practices converge in her forthcoming monograph, Amy Ashwood Garvey and the Future of Back Feminist Archives (Lawrence Wishart, Summer 2022) and Caird Research Fellowship at The National Maritime Museum, ‘Curating Archives of Affect: Black Feminist Pasts, Presents, and Futures’ (December 2021 - September 2020), and my ongoing visual series, ‘Becoming with Archive: Blackness, Gender, Diaspora’ (2010 - Present).

Alongside her practice-based research, Nydia work as the Curator of Learning at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, where she collaborates with academics, curators, artists, and writers to develop a multi-disciplinary, practice-based research and learning program. She is also a member of Feminist Review’s Editorial Collective and the Curator of Programmes, and co-edited a recent issue on queer, feminist, diasporic, and decolonial archives.

Please read on and explore the topics of interest below for a thoughtfully curated account of the many individuals discussed in the episode.

Where to find Nydia?
www.nydiaswaby.com
On LinkedIn

What's Nydia reading?
The Sex Lives of African Women by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah
Dear Science and Other Stories by Katherine McKittrick

What's Nydia watching?
Master
Daughters of the Dust

Other topics of interest:
Amy Ashwood Garvey
Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
Pan African Movement
Garveyism
Jamaica Kincaid
On Code Switching
Double Consciousness
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Ifeanyi Awachie
Imani Perry
Lorraine Hansberry
Barby Asante
S. Pearl Sharp
Akosua Adoma Owusu
Rita Gayle
Joan Morgan
Brittney Cooper
The Politics of Pleasure

Special Guest: Nydia Swaby.