Aida Sykes

Brainstormer, Connector, Consultant, Foodie, Muslim, World traveler

Aida Sykes is a gender and inclusive business specialist who helps companies develop multidisciplinary approaches to doing business in a way that serves society as well as shareholders. Aida has 12 years of private sector experience, mainly in East and Southern Africa. She is currently leading a two-year gender and financial inclusion program for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), working with leading companies to close gender gaps in Tanzania’s financial services sector. Aida is also the founder of Ascend Advisory Services, an independent consultancy that works with companies in Europe and Africa that seek innovative approaches to inclusion and sustainability. Prior to this, Aida worked in the Nairobi office of Dalberg Advisors, an impact-driven management consulting firm where she worked on inclusive business, agriculture and health projects in Tanzania, Zambia and Kenya. Prior to Dalberg, Aida spent three years advising start-ups in South Africa and Kenya on their sales and marketing strategies. Aida began her career at Standard Bank Group, spending five years as a relationship manager and leveraged finance manager in Corporate and Investment Banking, first in Tanzania and then at the Group’s head office in South Africa. While at Standard Bank, Aida supported agribusiness and infrastructure clients in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, Namibia and Botswana. Aida holds a Master of Business Administration from the NYU Stern School of Business, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Yale University. She is fluent in Kiswahili and English, and she is an advanced French speaker. Aida is passionate about equal access to opportunity for all people and is committed to applying her professional experience and global networks towards this important goal.

My family, my friends, my rest, cooking, eating, travelling, reading, writing, music (everything Beyonce + 80s-2010s RnB mostly).

Insecure overachiever work culture is bad for everyone, even tall, fit, handsome, straight, white, married men with healthy heads of hair, nice tans, pretty wives, cute kids, a pool, good mental health & no debt. We always try to solve for the marginalized, but what if we tried to solve for those who hold the most power? What if we start with where they spend the most amount of time & exert the most control: elite workplaces which take overwork & favoritism as a given. What if we make the workplace better for everyone by making it better for privileged straight white men? Taking race & gender out of the equation for a second, let's consider: If we can transform insecure overachieving into secure achieving, we will have better rested, more motivated staff who produce their best work more often than not, who feel invested in the team's success not just their own, who are receptive to doing their part to create an inclusive work environment, because they have balance in their lives. When people are working under a business model that relies on making them feel inadequate, they won't get any sleep or rest, which will lead to stress & burnout. When people are constantly made to feel like nothing they do is ever enough, that they are only as good as their next assignment, they will drain their internal reserves of self-worth & will either crash & burn, or make it to the top & continue the cycle of pain. The only reward in that scenario is to move from being the one receiving judgment, to the one giving judgment. Succeeding in such an environment becomes a false prize, because of what it has cost you in terms of mental & physical health, & more importantly, in your relationships with loved ones. A friend at a top consulting firm (yes, McKinsey) shared years ago that all the partners he knew were onto their second marriages, because their first ones couldn't survive the climb up the ladder. Imagine that? You find someone you like enough to be spiritually & legally tied to them, & it ends because your boss needs slides. How sad for everyone involved. Now, let's bring back in race & gender. Most of the partners at top firms globally are male & white. Based on the state of labor rights & the economy, they are not the most empathetic & compassionate white men either. Is that because white men can't be empathetic & compassionate? Absolutely not. It's because the type of white men who can survive in the average elite workplace are not going to be the most empathetic & compassionate people of any race or gender. Such people can miss date night, birthdays, anniversaries, school plays, doctors' appointments, sports games, even family vacations, because of work, & be proud of themselves for doing so. The white men who value family time & balance leave for smaller firms or they get new careers as teachers, writers, or microbrewers. But what if the white men who prioritized their (first) marriages & their children felt they could stay at top firms & also be there for their families? Wouldn't they bring that empathy & compassion to women, black people, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, older people, & all other people? My firm belief is that the work of dismantling inequality is not the sole work of the marginalized. It's also the work of the people holding power, who happen to be white men. If these white men could get home in time for an evening walk & dinner, have weekends with their families, feel confident about their abilities, I believe they would be much more willing to cede power to the rest of us. They know enough about what's wrong. We non-white-men have shared, spoken, cried, yelled, walked away, tried again. The problem is clear. Those who benefit the most, those who hold the most power, need to implement holistic policies & practices to create more inclusive workplaces. They will benefit too, because the truth is insecure overachieving hurts us all, & it has ripple effects in society. Hypercompetitive kindergartens, which require a fetus to be on an admissions waiting list before it is even conceived, are the results of insecure overachiever culture. so is the sense that there is limited success & admiration to go around, so you must get in early, even if you pay someone to take your child's SATs. That level of pressure takes the joy out of life for everyone. Lack of joy perpetuates inequality, because people are in survival mode. Let's get out of survival mode. Let's believe in our intrinsic value, & our right to getting 6-8 hours of sleep every night. Someone may say, what about business, clients & profit? To this I say, tired people produce shoddy work, & clients can see right through it. Rested staff will produce more careful, thoughtful work, which will build trust & loyalty with clients. You'll be able to charge more for this higher quality of work so profits will be fine. There's a discussion to be had around whether growth is the only measure of success, but one thing at a time. I must go to bed.

Anti-racism, Diversity & inclusion in the workplace, Facilitating difficult discussions, Financial inclusion, Gender equality in the workplace, Strategy, sub-Saharan Africa's socioeconomy

Not sure what this means :)

I think people have a decent idea what I'm good at, I'm pretty open about what my strengths and weaknesses are.