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Amerley Ampofo is an incredibly inspirational person. She works in the telco field for MTN Ghana, which is the largest provider of telco services for the country. Her journey from GeoMarketing into Customer Insights & Analytics, continually building on GIS was fascinating to hear and I connected with Amerley immediately. She has a fun personality, is very positive and is extremely driven. She has focused throughout her career on doing the best job she can wherever she is and learning as much as possible while there. Amerley attributes her success to her innate curiosity and natural proclivity to solving problems for the good of the business and society. She says that she has always asked questions to try to learn and encourages listeners to do the same. No matter our role, we can always strive to improve and the best way to do that is to get curious, according to Amerley. I could go out on a limb and say that Amerley has made a career specializing in applying GIS and coupling those skills with her inquisitive nature; in doing so, she has established herself as a subject matter expert in the geospatial field and is an invaluable asset to her industry.
This conversation was epic and I felt as though Amerley and I had a lot in common with regard to our very similar leadership views. We were able to share thoughts and ideas about supervising highly performant teams across industries. We covered the gamut of topics including motivating others, encouraging and supporting the team, and managing project loads. When she emphasized emotional intelligence as being fundamental to good leadership, I felt that sentiment to my core. She was so on target; being in control of your own emotions as the leader of the team is paramount to being able to lead a team well.
And speaking of teams, Amerley accomplishes amazing work with hers; they strive to push the envelope and regularly succeed, innovating new and creative solutions to the challenges faced in the telecom business for Ghana. One thing I zeroed in on was Amerley’s refusal to accept an excuse of not having something they need. She flips the script and asks “what DO we have” and then works from this position of bounty. It shouldn’t be such a revolutionary idea, to look for the positive in a given situation, however in today’s world it seems as though more often than not, the focus hones in on what is lacking. I found this part of my conversation with Amerley so refreshing on so many levels. Not only in Ghana, but across Africa, it seems as though this mindset of positivity trends. The professionals in this region don’t let what they lack slow them down; these folks are extremely creative at producing high value products with far less infrastructure and data established than we are typically accustomed to having in the western countries.
Chatting with Amerley was fantastic and made me want to book a trip to Ghana. She has an incredible journey to GIS and is extremely knowledgeable about applying the technology to a variety of situations.
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