Elle Asiedu
The Re-Seasoning Coalition
Canada
A dynamic leader and serial entrepreneur with a knack for impact, Elle Asiedu is the co-founder and Executive Director of The Re-Seasoning Coalition, a non-profit organization currently developing a research-backed e-learning program that aims to increase Black representation in the food & hospitality industry by making equity and anti-racism an essential part of career development. Supporting both restaurants and corporate foodservice brands, her program will provide tailored expertise and deep learning in small sessions to create industry-specific solutions that build a new standard of equity and inclusion in the country’s most multicultural industry. As a young leader, Elle is most excited about working with the WLW Advisors to sharpen her organizational, partnership, and marketing skills and looks forward to acquiring new ones in the areas of board governance, corporate sales, and national program rollout/uptake.
About
Me.
What is your story?
What drives your work?
A couple of years ago I realized that in some way, I have always been involved in projects that celebrated, encouraged, or optimized Blackness and the Black experience. Being of both African and Caribbean heritage, there is a deep thread of pride, acceptance, and inclusion that seems to run through my life.
As someone who knows who she is and loves what she sees and can do, I think I am driven by the opportunity to create mechanisms where other Black folks can feel the same way.
In one way or another, I have always held leadership positions in my familial, educational, and professional life and consistently explore opportunities and relationships that expand my abilities to listen, process, and provide advice. I am often the youngest in a room of a movers and shakers but try to glide through them with confidence and a steadfast belief in my right to be at the table and constructively contribute to the conversation. I am often lauded for my quick processing time and ability to ask the necessary, strategic, or tough questions to ensure that the decisions being made are holistic in their approach and multidimensional in their potential impact.
I am driven by a vision for the world where Black people can achieve their highest potential in environments that are ready and willing to receive them. I am also driven by an intuitive sense that I am here for a reason and that I have BIG work to do.
I am also propelled by a love of collaboration and cross-pollination that can turn even the plainest shrubs into masterpieces. I stand as one and come as ten thousand.
Describe your biggest strength as a leader
I am curious, open-minded, self-aware, creative, organized, resourceful, highly-skilled, diplomatic, and a good listener.
I am quick to apologize, am OK with being wrong and/or uncomfortable, and am always willing to collaborate. My intuition is strong and my inner compass for opportunities that are right for me or TRSC is calibrated quite well.
I happen to be a good writer, enjoy reading widely, and also count public speaking, graphic design, project management, and market research among my core competencies.
I also enjoy being a leader and always have been. From the first time I was "elected" leader of team Ketchup & Mustard on Hot Dogs in grade 5, to being elected party chair of the EMBSS party (Equality Makes Better and Safer Societies) in grade 7, and across all of the school, university, work, and home-based leadership opportunities that have come my way, this innate knowing of my place in the world has acted as a true north that rights my ship in the rare instances when I doubt myself.
My biggest strength is confidence in myself, my abilities, and the realization that my intuition is always right and the Universe always has my back.
Describe your biggest challenge as a leader
1) Everything that I know about leadership and the (mostly successful) way that I lead is largely based on instinct. Even my strategic thinking skills are built on what I observe from people's personalities or previous actions, not necessarily hard and fast rules about strategy.
While instinct has turned into experience over time, I don't have a lot of formal training to rely on when situations look a little wobbly or I'm faced with a tough question. This doesn't meant that I don't go my own research to come up with possible solutions, it just means that I end up, perhaps ineffeciently, spending more time looking inward for a solution than outwardly.
2) I also struggle with or can be undermotivated to find talent to lighten my load because of my voracious curiosity and the accompanying ability to quickly grasp new skills with a relatively high quality of output. That doesn't mean that I don't delegate as needed, but it does mean that I can waste time trying to find a really excellent candidate or someone with a lot of potential who I can trust to a) get the job done well or b) start at the beginning and ramp up quickly. This tendency to be everything for everybody, as I've alluded to earlier in the application, will end up being ineffective in the long run and I'd like some guidance that isn't "Identify your zone of genius, Figure out your ikaigai!", in order to grow past this tendency while keeping my brain engaged and the quality of TRSC's output, high.
3) I can also struggle with consistency, although I am hesitant to type this as a challenge as I have come to learn that the ebbs and flows of my energy and enthusiasm can be pretty clearly linked to the 4 stages of my menstrual cycle. In fact, cycle syncing can be a great way of being consistently productive - I just haven't really put in the work to track my productivity and make adjustments, phase after phase.
4) It feels strange to type this, but I struggle with often being the youngest person in the room. Although I never broadcast my age, I am blessed with a young face which means that, depending on my brand's track record in a certain arena & whether or not the person across from me is racist, my out-of-the-box suggestions or diplomatic nature can be mistaken for a lack of understanding or power. Don't get me wrong, I believe in myself and when I'm plugged in and presenting or coming up with a strategic plan, there's no doubt in my mind that I'm exactly where I'm meant to be. I suppose that because *I* know I'm the youngest in the room, I attribute any failures or delays to the other side not giving my ideas/suggestions/offer full consideration due to my age and their perception of my inexperience.
About the
Organization
and the Project.
Sector
Not-for-profit
Website
Vision & Mission
The Re-Seasoning Coalition's mission is to increase the representation and propel the advancement of Black Canadians at all levels of the foodservice industry through research, programing, and community engagement.
As the organization grows and we find success in implementing programming that positively affects the experiences of Black Canadians in foodservice, our mission will evolve to reflect a broader focus on better outcomes for Canadians of all equity-deserving groups, but we will never waver from working to improve the experiences of Black Canadians.
Our vision is to forge a foodservice industry as enduring and adaptable as a well-seasoned cast iron skillet. We work to create an environment where Black Canadians and those of other equity-deserving groups can thrive in their chosen careers, thereby enhancing the strength and success of the sector. Through our research, programming, network, and reputation, we aim to continually 're-season' the industry, fostering racial equity and representation, combating systemic inequalities, and ensuring every individual has the opportunity to reach their full potential.
Year Founded
2020
No. of Employees
2
Years in the Organization
4 years
Annual Budget (USD)
$275.421 CAD
Geographical Area Served
Currently we are focused on serving the needs of Ontario as that is where we are based, where the largest population of Black Canadians live, and where our grant- funded activities are tied to.
Eventually, through consistent revenue-generating activities, we will shift our programming to support a national audience.
Organizational /
Project Description
Over the course of the fellowship, I will be focused on executing our Equity & Empowerment in Foodservice Program (EEP), for which we have just received half a million dollars in federal funding from the Department of Women and Gender Equality to develop and execute over two years.
The EEP is a hybrid workforce development program designed to increase the representation of and propel the career advancement of Black Ontarians in the foodservice industry by training corporate and restaurant employers in the fundamentals of equity and anti-racism through a 3-module e-learning course.
Driving systemic change requires disrupting unequal structures from the inside out. Accordingly, we have been purposed in creating a program that dismantles barriers rather than forcing those being discriminated against to change their reality.
By aligning with the right industry leaders to propel training uptake, providing avenues of access for Black Canadians interested in corporate, restaurant, or entrepreneurship-focused foodservice careers, and working with government funders to put systems change programs in place, we believe we can affect systemic change in the food industry, in our lifetime.
The goals of the EEP are as follows:
-Publish our second, race-based study examining the specific experiences of Black women in the foodservice industry to pair with our previous research study results looking at the total Black experience
-Develop a vibrant, asynchronous e-learning program informed by our research and designed in collaboration with equity and anti-racism scholars to help corporate foodservice & restaurant employees understand what racism looks like in the workplace and how to combat it by building anti-racism into their processes and optimizing the recruitment, retention, and promotion of Black women within their organizations and restaurants.
-Enroll 125 participants in the program and have them complete a minimum of 60% of the three module program and 7.5h of learning enrichment within the 2-year project period
-Connect 100 Black women to 80 recruiters, HR reps, and talent specialists over the course of two annual conferences to drive increased career and mentorship opportunities in the foodservice industry while sharing expert learnings, and celebrating participating organizations who have successfully completed 60% of the learnings.
Within a year of the completion of with these activities, we will also be building out a business certification -- essentially a Michelin Star for equity and anti-racism -- to incentivize restaurant and corporate business owners to enroll in our program based on the increased restaurant traffic and brand affinity resulting from greater consumer, employee, and partner awareness of their dedicated and constructive work in DEI.
Why is this project important and timely?
What is the target population of your project?
We have designed and developed the e-learning component of the EEP for maximum uptake in one of Ontario’s busiest industries. Foodservice never stops and yet it is an essential provincial employer for students, newcomers, and workers from all walks of life.
Our work has revealed that the problem is not that there aren’t enough jobs for Black people in foodservice, it’s that jobs aren’t equitably spread across employees of various races, leaving Black people without opportunities for advancement, economic stability, and leadership. This project will increase employers’ capacity to implement practices that reduce barriers for Black Canadians by demonstrating the realities of systemic racism, highlighting their role in enforcing or disrupting discrimination, and giving them tools for change.
Our project will serve to optimize the entire foodservice industry in the long term, and will specifically benefit Black women and the participants who take the program in the short term.
While we will be able to impact approximately 125 (mostly non-Black participants) and over 100 Black women over the course of our 2-year program, the ripple effect of the learnings we will share during the course of the e-learning program promises to positively impact thousands through the structural changes that will be made in the workplace, thereby creating and/or fostering more equitable workplaces for all.
Our program will also equip participants with a rich understanding of what equity and anti-racism looks like in the workplace which will continue to be an essential soft skill as Canada’s demographics continue to shift due to waves of immigration from Asia and Africa.
How will you know that you have achieved that impact? What data will you use to assess your impact?
Given we are focused on systems change, assessing the widespread impact on our program will take years, not months.
Despite this timeline, we have put the following assessment mechanisms in place to collect cross-functional data that can paint a rudimentary picture of our impact:
- Participant surveys throughout the duration of the grant program, evaluating the efficacy of the e-learning content, delivery, and learning enrichment sessions
- External evaluation performed at key checkpoints with participants, our curriculum designer, learning enrichment facilitator, and myself, to assess the overall design of the program and whether our intended outcomes were realized
- Post-event surveys at each of our program's networking sessions/conferences to quantify the successes realized by job seekers and recruiters
- A follow-up national research study to compare the results of our 2021 survey with the attitudes of Black and non-Black Canadians in the foodservice industry, post-program
Once our business/restaurant certification launches, we will also use the number of certified businesses and the number of certification renewals as data points to highlight our impact and the strength of TRSC's mission!
How do you anticipate this unique leadership education impacting you personally? What new skills are you hoping too develop & grow through this experience?
I am truly hopeful that, at the end of this leadership education, I will have developed a strong synergy and athlete-coach relationship with a mentor who recognizes the depth and breadth of my talent and can identify those areas that need to be adjusted to help me be excellent, consistently. I have only had that type of relationship once before and it was just for a few hours, with one of our Board members. Just thinking about the opportunity to tap into that kind of productive energy over the course of several hours and days is exhilarating.
I hope to be paired with someone who has a strong connection to their intuition and can help me better harness mine for the business world.
So far, the emails I've received from Julie as part of the HWL newsletter list excite me. I feel the butterflies start to flap their wings as I ponder the opportunities that could arise as a result of being part of a network of interconnected, badass women who can provide me with new ways to think, act, and execute.
I am looking forward to strengthening my grasp of fundamental business administration skills (the ones I didn't learn about with my university degree) and adding other specialties like negotiation, Board governance, and everything and anything to do with driving corporate profitability/financial health.
I also want to learn how to successfully and lucratively being multi-passionate creative or a multihypenate director. I know that's possible - I just know I need the guidance to show me how to balance my interests to stay agile, energetic, and in the zone.
Being paired with leaders who will be able to satisfy my curiosity and guide me in learning new ways of being will have an exponential impact on my life, allowing me to blossom in a way that makes the most of my purpose and positively impacts others.
I know that I am on Earth for a very specific purpose and it would be a thrill and an honour to continue to reveal the big picture as part of the WLW fellowship.
Where would you like to see yourself professionally in the next 3 years?
In three years, I would like to see The Re-Seasoning Coalition split into a tech corporation and a non-profit with hundreds of participants enrolled in our e-learning course every quarter, with me as both the CEO and Executive Director.
I would also like to balance this commitment with speaking engagements that highlight me as a thought leader and bring attention to the brand and our business certification. It would also be nice if, within the next 3 years, our e-learning program won an award from the James Beard Foundation for our impact on the working conditions in restaurants across North America!
Candidly, I'd also like to see myself be at a point where I'm not taking brain power away from doing the work to worry about money or being able to pay the rent. To draw a salary that completely takes care of my needs, wants, and future would reduce the mental and energetic burden that I am sure you know is often part of the story associated with Black women leaders in the social impact space. The psychological safety that comes with knowing your bills are paid is immense, and having been on welfare for the last 5 months while building an incredibly important program at an organization that has never drawn me a salary, I can well and truly say that this dream of financial security through professional success is one that I look forward to as a result of the connections formed through HWL/WLW.