Reflection Black History Month msakkal February 19, 2026 9 mins read / News / Reflection / Black History Month Awovi Komassi’s Perspective, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Béati Foundation, on Governance, Equity, and Responsibility As part of Black History Month, we have chosen to introduce you to our new Chair, Awovi Komassi. Trained as a jurist, Awovi has never viewed her career as a fixed trajectory. Her professional path in Québec has been shaped through experience in corporate law, a foray into writing analytical articles on legal entrepreneurship and the transformation of the profession, followed by work in legal compliance and environmental, health, and safety risk management. She then turned to the integration of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues in international trade, before directing her expertise toward the management of impacts and risks associated with investment decisions. She now works in the development finance sector, where she contributes to embedding social and environmental considerations at the core of financial decision-making. While mentorship is often cited to explain professional trajectories, Awovi instead emphasizes the importance of sponsorship: those individuals who, in concrete terms, believed in her, gave her opportunities, and opened doors. This distinction is crucial, particularly as Black women are often over-mentored… yet rarely meaningfully supported in gaining access to decision-making spaces. With Togolese and Ghanaian roots, Awovi draws on a plural heritage that informs both her vision and her professional commitment. Being able to work in a sector connected to sub-Saharan Africa is not incidental; it represents a continuity between personal history, professional responsibilities, and an awareness of global interdependencies. We invite you to discover her perspectives on governance, real power, equity, and the responsibility of institutions in the face of today’s crises. Vision of Governance For Awovi, thinking about governance also means thinking about those who are not yet at the table. Future generations, of course, but also communities that have historically been excluded from decision-making processes while disproportionately bearing the consequences of those decisions. To deny this reality would be to continue making choices whose costs others will inherit. “Already today, we are managing the effects of decisions made in the past.” This vision implies a non-fixed relationship to decision-making. Governance must remain iterative and agile. A decision is not an endpoint, and gains are not always immediate. The challenge is to avoid shifting debts—whether human, social, or environmental—onto the future. Major challenges lie in coherence. Institutions are made up of human beings, with their limitations. The issue is not to demand perfection, but to ensure genuine continuity between stated values, intentions, and the decisions that are made. This coherence is also what underpins credibility, particularly when it comes to investments that claim to generate impact. “Institutional responsibility is not abstract. Ecological and social crises are very real, and their impacts are not distributed equitably. They are not new either: they call on us to learn from the past and to act with clarity in the present.” As Chair of the Board of Directors of the Foundation, Awovi situates her mandate in continuity with the work already underway. During the development of the strategy, the first step was to clarify intentions, make them public, and take responsibility for them. The current phase is one of implementation. The credibility of the Foundation now rests on its ability to translate these commitments into tangible results. Her mandate is clear: to ensure that stated intentions are transformed into real impact. From Representation to Real Power Diversity should not exist only in appearance, without real power. Representation becomes a lever only when it is accompanied by trust, time, genuine decision-making authority, and shared responsibility. Simply being “there” is not enough. Being appointed without support or room to maneuver can even expose individuals to well-documented situations of vulnerability, such as the glass cliff. Diversity becomes an alibi when it is not paired with a clear willingness to transform practices. True inclusion, according to Awovi, begins where listening becomes uncomfortable. It requires accepting challenges to one’s perspectives and recognizing that welcoming difference implies being changed by it. An institution that claims to promote diversity and inclusion must be prepared to evolve, rather than merely recruit different profiles without truly integrating them. Equity as Ongoing Work Awovi insists on a central point: equity is not a target to be reached, but ongoing work. It requires long-term commitment, a capacity for constant adaptation, and a refusal to let the burden rest on the exhaustion of a few individuals. Communities are not monolithic, and representation cannot be limited to certain profiles deemed more “acceptable” within highly standardized spaces, particularly in terms of language, credentials, or modes of self-presentation. She also emphasizes that diversity is not only about identities, but about ways of thinking, doing, and producing outcomes. Effective knowledge and practices exist outside traditional institutional frameworks, even when they do not align with dominant criteria of recognition. Awovi also rejects the idea of becoming a spokesperson for so-called “voiceless” people. In her view, everyone has a voice. The issue is not the absence of voices, but the collective choice not to listen to certain experiences, forms of knowledge, and lived realities. These voices are expressed in multiple ways, and it is the responsibility of institutions to create the conditions in which they can be heard. Integrating the Living World as a Stakeholder This reflection extends to how institutions understand and relate to nature. Awovi calls for moving beyond a strictly sector-based way of thinking in order to adopt a more holistic approach. Nature can no longer be treated as an externality; it is a full stakeholder in strategic decision-making. Nature “speaks”—through climate disruption, migration, territories, the communities that live in close relationship with it, farmers, scientists, regional populations, and more. Here again, it is a matter of choice: whether to listen or to ignore. Recognizing this voice requires asking, for every decision: who or what truly bears the cost? It is within this framework that the Foundation integrates regions and equity-seeking groups among its funding priorities. Not in a symbolic way, but by seeking to embed these considerations into processes, practices, and decision-making mechanisms, with rigor and conviction. Institutional recognition remains important, particularly because it helps legitimize voices, create spaces for dialogue, and strengthen credibility. On its own, however, it does not produce change. It cannot replace the organization’s collective responsibility. Institutional recognition is therefore not an end in itself, but a starting point. While her path and identities necessarily shape her perspective, Awovi emphasizes what matters most to her: the rigor with which an organization governs itself, and its genuine capacity for self-examination. It is through this commitment to coherence, accountability, and continuous learning that deep and lasting transformations can take root. 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