Profile: Kadijatu Grace Ahene PhD is an experienced counselor, motivational speaker, and mental health professional with more than a decade of experience in mental health, social services and criminal justice. As a seasoned psychologist, Dr. Ahene is the founder of Psychology of Winning, an initiative aimed at transforming the minds of youth to make informed and responsible life choices coupled with disciplined yet transformative actions. Through this initiative, Dr. Ahene has supported hundreds of young people – equipping them with meaningful tools and strategies to make appropriate choices and positive decisions in a variety of different situations that they face.
Kadijatu has a niche for engaging in spaces for youth leadership development and social change in her home country, Sierra Leone. Drawing on her vision and love for Sierra Leone and passion for promoting the next generation of youth leaders, she’s determined to reach one mind at a time, work with the required institutions to implement her vision, and continue to further advance young people's leadership and economic empowerment and progression.
Recently, in her home country, Sierra Leone, she collaborated with a notable national bank on a flagship project in which she conducted school tours across the country - engaging students with motivational messages that resonate with their inner desires to be the change that they want to see in the world.
Kadijatu is a published author of Broken Chains & Saved by Grace in the spring 2018 issue of the Journal of Self-Empowerment, a recipient of the Golden Wheels Award,
Kadijatu is the founder of several other youth-focused development initiatives. They include the Yaweis Institute in Southern Sierra Leone established as a skills training program for young women and girls; She Arose Motivational Platform, an institution through which a book, Dija’s Touch Designs, will soon be published. She is also the founder of a Pre-school that specializes in training children and youths in Bo District, Southern Sierra Leone.
A strong believer in environmental sustainability, Kadijatu is a founder member of the Center for Innovation and Sustainability (CIS), a U.S and Sierra Leonean-based collective that strives to build communities of resilience for sustainable lifestyle by leveraging the power of community-based participatory approaches for a climate resilient future in emerging economies.
Kadijatu obtained her PhD in Cognitive Psychology and Psycholinguistics, CICA University New York, a Master of Arts in Humanities & Social Sciences, Grand Canyon University, Arizona.
