Welcome to #WiMMeets - a series of short interviews with marketing leaders from across Africa and around the world. The series will present a different side to senior professionals with the aim to share the things that matter to them and inspire others.
In this interview we sat down with Tucci Ivowi, CEO for Ghana Commodity Exchange.
Mrs. Tucci Ivowi is the Chief Executive Officer and a founding member of the Ghana Commodity Exchange. Her professional experience of over 20 years spans the UK, emerging markets of Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa’s private and public sectors.
Prior to joining the Ghana Commodity Exchange, Tucci was the first female and first Ghanaian Business Executive Officer (Executive Director) for Nestle Central & West Africa Region. During her 15 years with Nestle, she worked in various roles including Managing Director, Marketing Communications Director and Business Unit Director, managing businesses and teams across 22 countries.
A thought-leader and Chartered Marketer, she is a contributor to the Harvard Business Review and CIM UK’s Catalyst Magazine for Marketing practitioners. Her professional qualifications include Executive Education in Leadership from the London Business School. She has a double degree in Politics and French from both the University of Sussex UK and The Higher Institute of Political Studies in Aix-en-Provence, France, and an MBA from Warwick Business School, UK.
She is the founder of Forty Lives, an NGO in Ghana which advocates for support of people with mental health conditions. She is the Board Chair of Girl Code Africa, an NGO seeking to bridge the gender divide for women in Africa through education in STEAM and she is an advisor to SFAN, an education social enterprise.
She has received recognition and several honours for her contributions as a business leader and humanitarian including CNBC’s Rising Woman Africa 2021.
You can connect with her via www.tucciivowi.com .
WiM Africa: What gives you energy and drives you forward when you are not feeling at the top of your game?
TI: Inner peace and strength coming from:
WiM Africa: Which advertising campaign, from any brand, has been the most memorable for you and why?
TI: A short film for Nestle Central & West Africa at 100 years, showing the role of Nestle, through its different brands, in families and homes across generations. Its personal because I’ve seen lives touched by the corporate and product brands in the region, and the cherry on top is that I was part of the team who created the film, one of the last projects I worked on before a complete change of work - embarking on a public sector project!
WiM Africa: What three pieces of advice would you give to a woman marketer aspiring to a senior position about getting to and staying at the top of their profession?
TI:
WiM Africa: Which one person, dead or alive, would you say inspires you the most and why?
TI: I draw my inspiration from so many people but what they all have in common is a goal, determination, skill and resilience. Sir Sam Jonah is a prime example. Through lazer sharp focus, grit and resilience, a Ghanaian who has many firsts under his belt, he defied many odds in the mining world to become an internationally renowned business leader. Witnessing his meteoric rise first hand has been nothing short of inspirational.
WiM Africa: If you were stuck on a desert island what three things, excluding electronics, could you not do without?
TI: Bible, Paper, Pen.
Discover more #WiMMeets interviews here!