Resilience by Design | OC Global
Third time, best time.
My first two years at Opportunity Collaboration, my agenda was simple: represent a brand, convene leaders I care deeply about, rush back to my inbox.
But this time, the third time, I committed.
Landed a day early in Albufeira to cheat jetlag, sit on the coastline in the sun, and weigh the tension of the day’s peaceful waves against history’s brutal colonialism…
Then 460+ global founders, funders, and capacity-builders arrived to “unconference.” My personal medicine – music – would set the tone.
Portuguese musicians and a DJ slipped from Bollywood to Afrobeats to salsa to Whitney-and-Michael. We pulled each other onto the floor, each dance "an invitation to try on someone else’s home," as Jailan Adly reflected.
This, I exhaled to myself, is what global power should feel like.
In our leadership circle of varied generations, continents, and roles, Obenewa Amponsah, PCC broke down any last walls that survived the dance floor, inviting us to sit with our names. Mine:
Eseosa. Gift of God.
Osagie. God sent.
For years, those have been my aspirational, yet burdensome mandate.
But OC 2025 asked whether our names could mean generosity rather than responsibility – sharing the fullness of our ancestors’ wildest dreams without all the angst.
Ada Williams Prince, Payel Farasat MScFA, and I brought that reframe to our “Capital for Turbulent Times” session. We abandoned sit-and-get, turned musical chairs into a redesign challenge, and generated concrete moves (stay tuned!) toward a capital ecosystem where resilience is resourced, not presumed.
And I left reaffirmed:
Resilience is not a trait to demand of leaders.
It’s a structure we build around them.
A structure that nurtures the “strategic and emotional agility” Maame Afon Yelbert-Sai reminded us we need during immense, global volatility.
On the flight back, scrolling through photos of joyful laughter, intense conversation, and heartfelt farewells, I realized this was the first OC year I was unmistakably…
Present. Useful. Myself.
That’s what we’re (re)designing for:
not just better grant cycles, sharper narratives, or more-more-more,
but ecosystems that pass the same vibe check as that first-night dance floor;
spaces that invite us, in all our cultural complexity, to brew liberated futures we’ve not yet imagined.
Photos from OC Global
