The Story behind Our Founder - Betsy Williams

More than 10 years ago, Betsy Williams moved from the US to Liberia to serve as an Assistant to the Minister of Health, inspired by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s historic election as Africa’s first female president and the opportunity to support her administration.

For Liberia, 2007 was a time of infinite needs — and opportunities. More than 20 years of conflict had decimated the country’s physical infrastructure, including buildings, roads and power systems, and destroyed almost all institutions of the government, economy and daily life.

But two years into President Sirleaf’s administration, the country was on the move, with a clear plan to accelerate development. Sirleaf had recognised the critical role of civil service leadership in delivering on some tough promises — to restore essential services in health and education, launch bold projects for power, agriculture, infrastructure, boost the economy and restore democratic rule. Through several programs targeted at the diaspora and foreigners, top talent from all over the world were recruited to reform Liberia’s broken government workforce.

But Betsy noticed something was missing: an opportunity for young Liberians to be part of the reconstruction of their country and to learn from the skills and experience of foreign experts.

In this environment, Betsy founded the President’s Young Professionals Program (PYPP) in 2009, a leadership program which invests in Liberia’s own talent by recruiting top performers into civil service positions and giving them the support and architecture they need to be successful. Since 2009, more than 140 impressive young leaders have been recruited through the program, with 85% of them still serving in government.

Now, the model is going continental. Betsy founded Emerging Public Leaders (EPL) is to expand the Public Service Fellowship program beyond Liberia, and build a new network of highly trained young public sector leaders – hundreds across Africa – with the skills and capacity to drive their countries to new levels of meritocracy, good governance, and efficient service delivery. Ghana was the first country to launch in 2018. Moving forward, EPL aims to host over 500 Public Service Fellows across 6 countries by 2023.

“I have seen how difficult it is for a ministry to not have the capacity or the skills it needs to implement its goals and vision. At Emerging Public Leaders, we say that the civil service is the ‘secret sauce’ and we believe in the importance of investing in the infrastructure of the civil service itself.”