Visionary Central: Where The Community Grows

Based on the idea of meeting the community where it is, Visionary Central is working to create an innovative, entrepreneurial space. Their goal is to support Ghanaians working on their craft from ideation to completion: enabling original ideas while increasing productivity for the society. 

Right from their website Visionary Central offers countless programs: business sessions, mentorship, summer camp, music studios, affordable spaces to work, and network mixers. One of their larger ongoing projects involves a virtual year round fellowship to help Ghanians build their businesses from the ground up. Under the mentorship tab, a notable quote summarizes the goal behind such programming as “teaching our members that there are multiple pathways in life and each one requires them to create a vision for themselves.”

People-Centric to its Core

A screenshot of their Website’s services page. Check them out online and join their mailing list! They also sell branded t-shirts.

Member Gloria Gyakari, who has supported the Visionary Central dream since day one, discussed the development of the organization from its founding during her undergrad to its restructuring after a trip to Asia. Visionary Central experienced another transformation when  Gloria decided to attend the University of Michigan for graduate school, where she was introduced to Jeremy Atuobi during Festifall. The two instantly connected over the possibilities ahead of Visionary Central and decided to join Innovation in Action together. At the Innovation in Action final showcase, they won the Audience Choice Award for $1,000!

When you talk to Gloria and Jeremy, you can hear how well-established the team dynamic is. They acknowledge each other’s strengths with a deep understanding of each individual’s role. It even says directly on their team page, “Each individual specializes in a specific part of the company, combining our talents to develop solutions that will benefit your business.” 

On the team, Gloria considers this project like a stepping-stone towards her desire to build smart cities. Through this project, she has enjoyed coming to understand users from an environmental standpoint in an urban community. Jeremy, on the other hand, is an excellent head of strategy. He believes his engineering background has helped him fulfill a role that can prove tedious. Outside of the university, Visionary Central’s COO, Abena Afful, has worked directly in businesses in Ghana, providing priceless ground expertise. Their CMO, Nelson Oduro, has eight years of marketing experience. The team’s CTO, Dibe Fabrice Laba, is a computer science major and assists with all design.

The Visionary Central Team supporting their branded t-shirts, which can be purchased on the website.

The fact that Visionary Central is internationally-based actually made it easier to transition after the pandemic hit. However, they did have difficulties stretching their small team to meet the demands of such a global project, as legal and cultural constraints can create setbacks. The team said the key to overcoming such constraints is finding a common language for your project that both domestic and international stakeholders can get behind. 

Now that Visionary Central is more established, however, the team has great faith that the future will bring great things because of their people-centric design. Their core values are growth, community, and empowerment. These values are reflected in the motto itself: where the community grows. This motto captures a quintessential Ghanaian practice of elevating in unity, and the team’s aim to better both individuals and their larger communities.

Visionary Central’s motto is rooted and refined in partnership. At the end of the day, Gloria commented, we are all teammates and external partners provide valuable resources that allow Visionary to take the Community beyond its pillars. Visionary Central’s current partners outside of Innovation in Action are Developers in Vogue and optiMize.

Reflecting on Their Progress

How does one build a project like this? Lots and lots of passion! Gloria remarked how constantly working on a project causes your passion to keep growing. It’s only natural to become more invested the harder you work. For Jeremy, developing his sense of creativity was huge because he had no previous design background, and he is excited to transfer these newfound skills to his career. Jeremy also talked about learning self-empathy, especially when you are young and presenting your ideas to various professionals because everyone will try to pull you in a different direction. 

The team is very thankful for all the resources and financial backings IiA and the wider university community has provided them and look forward to keeping those connections as their organization progresses. They confidently attributed their team’s success to the fact that they put values first. 

Looking Forward

Their short term plan is to work on their programming. Their fellowship empowering young people is starting this summer, and runs July 5th 2021 through June 2022. In the long-run, their plan is to build a center for ideas and collaboration, training the next cohort of leaders. Their goal is “to create an environment that allows communities to benefit from business advisory expertise and vivid workspaces such as visualization and open studio spaces to help place Ghana on the forefront of innovation in Africa.” This space will allow entrepreneurs to showcase their ideas and participate in various speaker series. As a profit enterprise, their goals are developed around what they believe will provide the best change for the promising continent.