“Volunteers do not necessarily have the time; they just have the heart.” – Elizabeth Andrew, spiritual teacher and author.

This article reflects on the amazing path and space my philanthropic initiatives have created in the corporate world and academia as well as the intricate details and detours that paved the way for me to excel on the journey to becoming the woman that I am today.

My first meaningful career volunteering role was when I helped the female Head of the Department of Statistics at University of Ghana run a Research Conference at the Noguchi Memorial Institute on the same campus just before graduating sometime in 2007.

She later made an offer for me to become a Teaching Assistant even though I did not graduate with an overall GPA of 3.0 and above. Volunteering for her allowed me to demonstrate my capabilities beyond that GPA number. My first two years of college were difficult for me because I had not processed what it meant to learn.

As my Dad would later counsel, “When you hit a wall while learning that is no reason for you to give up because that wall is the boundary that shows you your learning has just begun.” In other words, understanding everything to the point of that wall is no real learning. The beginning of the learning curve is where true education begins as you are now beyond your limit.

Even with his profound statement, it was not until I hit my knees to pray ‘The Prayer of Jabez’ that God would enlarge my territory and not make me cause pain that a new determination came over me to persevere, get my Statistics and Computer Science (double majors) undergraduate degree and understand the true wisdom of my dad’s encouragement.

So that my territory could be enlarged, I started having the heart to volunteer without always focusing on how much I was going to be paid for my services. And looking back on that first volunteering role that became a guiding light for my career, I can now see the impact of my philanthropic efforts on my paid career.

I relocated to the United States shortly after my Teaching Assistant contract ended. I volunteered as a Summer Youth Intern in 2009 for Groveton Baptist Church to support the Associate Pastor with Bible Studies and taking teenagers to Christian events like M-FUGE.

About a year later, I enrolled in the dual Master of Science program in Statistical Science and Operations Research at George Mason University and graduated with a 3.43 and 3.51 GPAs respectively. Soon, my former lecturers in Ghana began to refer their graduating students to me for counsel on how to study abroad in the United States. I offered my counsel freely to these individuals for many years.

Sometime in 2011, I was involved in a car accident with a drunk driver who was driving in my lane. That took me to an Orthopedic Center where the Surgeon treating me at Nirschl Orthopedic Center, shared that the center needed a Research Statistical Intern for a study they were conducting on their patients who have received Gentamicin application.

I got the role, and this too was an unpaid internship. Later the Research Coordinator and the Doctors named me as a Co-author of the publication ‘Intraoperative intra-articular injection of gentamicin: Will it decrease the risk of infection in total shoulder arthroplasty?’

When I needed to cite that I have an internship experience for the next paid internship I got at Progressive Corporation in the Summer 2012, this unpaid internship fulfilled that third requirement in the job description.

In June 2014, while working as a Senior Programmer Analyst II at Mathematica Policy Research Inc., a co-worker invited me to a ‘Data Science DC’ event. To RSVP for that event, I signed up on the Meetup social network. Later that evening, I got a recommendation to join an organization called Women Who Code.

A couple of weeks later, I showed up at the Martin Luther King Jr Library in Washington DC and found women teaching each other computer programming in an informal way. Upon walking into the room, I immediately wished my female classmates in the Mathematical Sciences program at the University of Ghana supported each other like that.

I made a decision to begin a network (which is like a chapter) for the organization and founded ‘Women Who Code – Accra’ in November 2015 by going to Ghana to launch seven maiden events – Hack-a-thon, SAS Studio Demo, Seminar: The Case for Programming, Panel Discussion: The value of Mentoring, Excel in Your Career Workshop, Lightning Talks: My Favorite Programming Language and Networking Night.

I financed my inaugural trip for nearly US$9,500 and picked the network’s major expenses up beyond the maiden events since Accra does not have in-country sponsors to cover internet, space and light snacks for our in-person programs on a consistent basis like other cities do in developed countries like San Francisco, Vancouver, Berlin, London, etc. Because Network Directors do not participate in fundraising initiatives at Women Who Code, I was advised by a Jewish lawyer to set up my organization that would enable me to raise funds to better support the women I wanted to help.

My organization Coders Who Travel Inc. (CWT) was inspired by that conversation and in October 2016, three former co-workers across Mathematica Policy Research Inc. and Deloitte & Touché LLP made a decision to become the initial Board Members for the new organization. After filing in December 2016, the organization received the critical 501(c)(3) designation just 6 months after filing.

CWT’s mission is to inspire and advance the careers of computer and mathematical programmers in emerging markets and underserved communities, and transform women, veterans, immigrants, students, and career professionals into coders.

Since August 2014, when I began recruiting women to be part of coding networks, we’ve had amazing men come out in support of the idea. I also learned that in developing countries, the men also need some help.

With a past tenure of 4.5 years at the Deloitte US Firms and almost 3 years at the think tank Mathematical Policy Research Inc., here is how volunteering helped me excel in the corporate environment.

1. Volunteering over the years helped me to know who I am. I know I am a servant leader. I know I am a mentor. I also know that I am an encourager.

2. Volunteering has helped me stay confident when performance reviews at work do not always carry good news. Feedback from volunteering gives me a holistic picture and it is the benchmark for filtering through criticisms that are constructive and those that are not.

3. Volunteering enabled me to believe in myself again. Becoming a Teaching Assistant at the University of Ghana helped me teach a cohort of students I had to retake classes with, in a prior year.

4. Volunteering enabled me to fill gaps in my job history when I resigned from Deloitte to focus on my mental wellbeing from March 2018 to January 2021.

5. Volunteering enabled me to become a Recording Artist and Composer of two music albums: ‘The Anointing Breaks the Yoke’ (2022) and ‘Ngosra No Bubu Nkonnua’ (2023) because the skillsets of organizing and project management I developed served me well to become a DIY musician.

6. My volunteering while at Deloitte, enabled me to embrace firm initiatives like US Black Consulting Cohort, Women in Data, CDx Empower, and StepUpDC.

About the Author

Afia Owusu-Forfie is a Senior Data Analytics Consultant alumna at Deloitte Consulting LLP within the Strategy & Analytics offering portfolio and the Artificial Intelligence & Data Engineering practice. She has founded two organizations from the ground-up; Coders Who Travel Inc. and Women Who Code-Accra.

Her work has been validated by Huffington Post, British Broadcasting Corporation, Class CNBC (38th minute), Voice of America and Coursera Inc. She is the Composer and the Recording Artist of 24 plus songs and a past Conference Panelist of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) during the 2019 World Manufacturing Forum in Cernobbio, Italy. She is the Founder, President and Executive Director at Coders Who Travel Inc.