Vivian Wiredu
Chief People Officer, Premier Invest · Abu Dhabi, UAE
In 2009, Vivian Wiredu was living in the UK and working in her second job since graduating. After almost six years at a software development firm, she joined a startup business expanding into Poland, the US and China, and she loved travelling between their offices and forming networks across countries. It got her thinking, however, that she had not worked in Africa or any emerging market, and she kept wondering how she might change that.
The answer came through a casual conversation with a friend, who was meeting an old acquaintance who was in London for a Careers in Africa Summit in Canary Wharf. The acquaintance was an HR director at Unilever. As a graduate, Vivian had reached the final stage of Unilever’s management programme before missing out, so she asked her friend to pass on her CV.
The Summit was much bigger than she had imagined, and her CV was shared more widely across the participating organisations. The following weekend, Vivian received a call from GCC informing her that several companies were interested in her for HR roles. It was a Sunday, so she dug out her work clothes in a hurry and headed to Canary Wharf for the Careers in Africa Summit. That day she met HR directors from various organisations, including Vodafone.
Not long after the Summit, Vodafone made Vivian an offer to join their Ghana office. Being originally from Ghana, Vivian says this move was “kind of a no-brainer”. She had always admired Vodafone from afar, and the job was a big one: turning a large state-owned institution it had acquired into a profitable commercial business. She accepted and flew out to Ghana to start her new role.
She spent two and a half years at Vodafone Ghana, and she sees it as a significant turning point in her career, largely because of what it led to. It was there that she built many of the connections and relationships that have stayed with her ever since. Vodafone was working hard to build its brand in Ghana, and that included within HR too. At Vodafone, Vivian helped run panel events that brought HR directors from multinationals together to discuss issues like salary surveys, which companies were often reluctant to talk about. The events made her well known across the HR and corporate network in Ghana, so much so that Barclays soon called to recruit her.
Vivian, however, felt it was too early in her time at Vodafone to leave, and she was having too much fun with the large but promising task she had ahead. Vivian’s contact at Barclays eventually passed her details to Standard Chartered, and this time when Standard Chartered approached her, she said yes, joining the bank in Ghana for about four more years before moving with it back to the UK. She had expected to spend only two or three years in Ghana but eventually stayed for more than six years. Vivian’s time at Standard Chartered stretched to 14 years across the Ghana and London offices. “If I wasn’t in Vodafone Ghana at the time doing all that stuff, I don’t know if I would have ended up at Standard Chartered,” she says.
When she left the bank in 2024, Vivian knew she didn’t want more of the same. She set up her own HR and coaching consultancy, supporting people with career, leadership and executive coaching, as well as consulting on HR projects. Through this work, she was approached by Premier Invest, who needed its HR frameworks and policies built from scratch. The Africa-focused work they do appealed to her, and she was clear she didn’t want to join another large multinational where she would be just one out of thousands. She has since joined Premier Invest as its first Chief People Officer, and has recently moved to Abu Dhabi.
Even after several international moves, she says change never really gets easier. Every move is different and brings something you didn’t expect. “The learning continues, the growth continues,” she says.
"You learn a lot when you’re not in your comfort zone. That’s where the learning actually happens.
For anyone in the diaspora considering a move back to the continent, Vivian’s advice is not to put yourself in a box or expect your career to follow a linear path. Things may be different from what you’re used to, but that is part of the value. “You learn a lot when you’re not in your comfort zone,” she says. “That’s where the learning actually happens.” She encourages people to embrace opportunities as they come, because if you don’t take one when it arrives, it may not come back again. Weigh your options and take a calculated risk, but don’t overthink it to the point where you can’t make a decision. “I don’t think anyone would regret moving to Africa for work, even if it’s for a few years,” she says. “I did it for six years and I’d do it again.”
Seventeen years on, the turning point in Vivian’s career started at a Careers in Africa Summit and a phone call on a Sunday. Today, her career continues to take her across the world, from London to Ghana and now Abu Dhabi, with Africa still at the heart of the work she does.
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