Ato Ulzen-Appiah's profile

The time has come to host my profile somewhere on the web. There's no better place to start than here. :-)

Profile of Ato Ulzen-Appiah
Ato Ulzen-Appiah is a consultant, (social) entrepreneur, manager, social media champion and blogger. He hails from Elmina, grew up in Kumasi and lives in Accra. A notable alumni of Presec, he studied at MIT for his Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering and had his Master's degree at Stanford in construction and engineering management. 

He's the director at the GhanaThink Foundation which mobilizes and organizes talent for the primary benefit of Ghana. GhanaThink, since its inception, has given birth to Kasahorow and Museke. It currently runs the Barcamp Ghana program (111 events since 2008) from which the Junior Camp Ghana program was created (40 events since 2013). Through GhanaThink, he also initiated National Volunteer Day in 2013, which is now part of the Ghana Volunteer Program. He also led the training of new social emtrepreneurs via GhanaThink's Komseko program. He led GhanaThink to ran initiatives like TechCamp West Africa, Jobcamp and Konnect.

He is an Entrepreneurship Development Specialist at the Kosmos Innovation Center (which was initially run by DAI Global for Kosmos Energy), training, mentoring and coaching young entrepreneurs and incubated startups, amongst other responsibilities. He is also part of the Africa's Talking team in Ghana which  provides a powerful API that allows you to charge and send payments to more than 300 million mobile account holders across Africa.

He worked at Rancard as product manager building new revenue services off its platform, in charge of payments and content hosting. He oversaw the building of the Intel Explore & Learn platform and the building of the African Leadership Network gathering application. He worked at Google as a program manager building sustainable tech communities in Africa, overseeing scores of tech events around the continent.

He has consulted for and at various organizations. He worked on the Youth Employment Inventory Report as part of a World Bank study in Ghana. He has also mentored and coached Cocoa Sika and Vocoa as part of the International Trade Centre's Chocothon program.

He has mentored and judged at various entrepreneurial events - including Seedstars Accra, Startup Weekend Accra, World Bank Negawatt Energy Challenge, multiple Village Capital Accelerator training, etc. 

He's a member of the Global Shapers Alumni, part of the World Economic Forum community, which organizes the Accra Discourse. He speaks at multiple events in Ghana and abroad, sharing his insight and experience on topics ranging from entrepreneurship to engineering and entertainment. He has spoken at events like the World Economic Forum on Africa, the Harvard African Business Conference, Pivot East and the Africa Youth For Results platform. 

He co-founded Museke.com -an African music website, with a focus of lyrics and has been called the 'African Music Bible'. Through Museke, he organized 2 African music awards and the website had content from over 45 African countries.

One of Ghana's top bloggers, he blogs about personal experiences and things of interest at mightyafrican.blogspot.com. He has won best Google+ Profile awarded at Ghana Blogging & Social Media Awards. He has been ominated as 1 of top 5 Twitter accounts in Ghana. He is a multiple nominee for best blog and blogger at Blogging & Social Media Awards. He was selected as a blogger for Festival Of African Bloggers & Youtubers in Senegal in 2017. Through his leadership, GhanaThink has been nominated for best organization with social media presence and Barcamp Ghana has been nominated for best use of social media for event organizers. He has been a digital influencer for several brand campaigns - including Coca-Cola, Barclays, Nokia, Nescafe, Jumia, Tecno & Huawei. 

He's very passionate about Ghana and Africa. He exhibits this through social media greatly, having started the #233moments, #WaakyeWednesday, #JollofJeudi and #IMGBT trends, the latter of which stands for "I Made Ghana Better Today".

Short Profile of Ato Ulzen-Appiah

Ato Ulzen-Appiah is a (social) entrepreneur, consultant, social media influencer and blogger. He works and consults in the youth and technology spaces primarily. He studied at MIT and Stanford in civil engineering and management disciplines. He's the director at the GhanaThink Foundation which mobilizes and organizes talent for the primary benefit of Ghana. He is the Entrepreneurship Development Specialist at the Kosmos Innovation Center (initially run by DAI Global for Kosmos Energy), mentoring and coaching incubated startups, amongst other responsibilities. He has consulted for various organizations, including the World Bank and the International Trade Centre. He worked at Rancard as product manager building new revenue services off its platform. He worked at Google as a program manager building sustainable tech communities in Africa. He speaks and has spoken at various international forums, including the World Bank Diaspora Trade Forum, African Business Conference at Harvard, and the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town. He's a member of the Global Shapers Alumni, part of the World Economic Forum community. He co-founded Museke -an African music website and blogs at mightyafrican.blogspot.com