Board of Directors | joan.O’sa Oviawe
Ms. joan.O’sa Oviawe is a policy and development specialist with over seven years of community development and cross-cultural collaborative experience. She has a strong background in designing and monitoring programs that help facilitate healthy and vibrant communities. In addition, she is a versatile, visionary and creative professional with a strong legislative advocacy background in Community and International development. Her passion and career path focuses on sustainable development and harnessing the innate abilities of the less privileged around the world for positive change. Joan is a fervent believer in collaborative learning and holistic development where indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing are taken into account and validated.
Joan’s work experience spans across multiple continents. She worked as an undergraduate research assistant on a UNESCO sponsored slave route project, and thereafter did her undergraduate research practicum with the Institute of Public Administration of Canada where she researched good governance in countries like Ghana and Malawi. Upon receiving her undergraduate degree, Joan worked for a community development trade association in Boston, USA, where she gained crucial experience in non profit management and she organized the organization’s annual meetings, convention and legislative action days at the Massachusetts State House.
As a Masters student, she was invited to conduct effective communication trainings in Kyrgyzstan (Central Asia), and to develop a public relations campaign for a consolidation of five of the Country’s largest micro lending institutions. Ms. joan.O’sa Oviawe is the recipient of various awards and scholarships. She is currently pursuing a Phd degree in Cultural Studies and Social Thought in Education. Her goal is to become a public intellectual and Grace Foundation is the perfect point where theory and practice intersects for her. She hopes to bring her research experience to her work in the Organization.
Joan has been invited, as well as presented at numerous National and International conferences. Notable among them are the World Congress of Comparative Education Societies in Havana, Cuba, International Association for Intercultural Education conference in Verona, Italy and the Caribbean Philosophical Association conference in Puerto Rico. Ms. joan.O’sa Oviawe was invited by The Margaret McDonald Policy Management and Administration Center, Nassau, Bahamas, to give a speech on students’ role in community building. She was also invited by UNESCO to participate in its ”African Regional Conference on Dialogue amongst Civilizations, Cultures, and Peoples,“ in Abuja, Nigeria. She was recently invited to join an e-forum discussion on “Women, and Political Participation in Africa,” by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. She has co-guest edited a special issue: Quality Education in Africa: Challenges and Prospects. for the International Review of Education. Ms. joan.O’sa Oviawe is passionate about being a positive catalyst agent in Nigeria and Africa and hopes to contribute her quota in moving the Country and Continent forward!