Mawuena Adzo Trebarh was a pioneering Ghanaian business executive, investor, and geologist.
She was the first woman to serve as CEO of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) from 2013 to 2017 and the first female underground exploration geologist in the Ashanti Region. Trebarh also became the first female Board Chair of Movenpick Ambassador Hotel Ghana.
Born in Ghana, she pursued higher education in Nigeria and held a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology and Mining from the University of Jos and an MBA in Management and Strategic Planning from Bentley College.
Trebarh held significant roles, including deputy spokesperson for the 2020 NDC Election Campaign, corporate services executive at MTN Ghana, and manager of communications for Newmont Ghana Ltd. She began her career at Ashanti Goldfields Company Ltd.
Trebarh was married to Divine Trebarh and had a daughter, Katherine Joy. She was an advocate for business reforms and female representation in the workforce and media. Trebarh passed away on 10 April 2024 at age 52. She received awards including the Millennium Leadership Forum Award and the National Youth Role Model Award.
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Mawuena Adzo Trebarh is currently the founder and Chief Business Strategist at Inspire Africa Consult and a consummate business professional with wide experience in both the public and private sectors. In her storied career, she has won the admiration of colleagues and competitors alike and come to exemplify excellence and professional achievement in industries that are varied and diverse.
She undertook further studies at the McCallum Graduate School of Business, Bentley College in Massachusetts, USA where she earned a Master’s in Business Administration in Management and Strategic Planning in 2002.
She joined Ashanti Goldfields Company (now Anglogold Ashanti) in 1996 as the first ever female underground geologist employed by the company. This was merely the first in a string of firsts that would come to characterize her career.
After stints in the Resource Evaluation and Investor Relations departments at the gold mining firm, the versatile Mrs. Trebarh moved to Newmont where she served as head of corporate Communications from 2003 till 2007, overseeing an ambitious communications campaign that was unprecedented on the continent. During her tenure, Newmont would establish a continental and global brand presence that in some ways defined the sector that had come to lack a clear leader in the country. This was a huge feat for someone who had trained in an entirely different field.
Her achievements were noticed by communications behemoth, MTN, which invited her to take on the challenge of leading their corporate services division at a time when the company was going through major changes to consolidate its position as the unchallenged leader in the Ghanaian market. So successful was she at MTN that she virtually became the standard for corporate communication excellence in the country, providing leadership and inspiration for many of her peers in the field.
In 2013, Mawuena Trebarh entered the public sector for the first time as the first female Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre, the state agency tasked with attracting and directing inward investment into the Ghanaian economy. Her natural abilities, competence and instincts came through in this new role and during her tenure, Ghana saw its highest quarterly intake of foreign direct investment in the first quarter of 2015 when it brought in USD 1.12 billion. She also led GIPC for the first time ever to win the award for Best Investment Promotion Agency in Western and Central Africa, ahead of Rwanda and Nigeria. If there were any doubts that Mrs. Trebarh could function in any conceivable role, this stint must have laid them to permanent rest.
Mrs. Trebarh returned to private business in 2017 in her role as Chief Business Strategist at Inspire Africa Consult, the business consulting firm she founded. She has also served in a number of high- profile appointments, including becoming the first female board chairperson of the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel, Ghana. She has won several awards including the Millennium Leadership Forum Award for championing excellence in trade investment and agro-processing and the National Youth Role Model Award for being a role model and youth leader. She is married with a daughter.
