Accra, Ghana, September 17, 2026: Emma Wenani did not set out to become one of the most decorated women in African public relations. In 2010, she moved from Kenya to Ghana intending to stay a year. Sixteen years later, she is Chief Director of Global Media Alliance (GMA), one of Ghana's leading integrated communications firms, and a name that keeps appearing on lists of the continent's most influential women.
This year alone, she has been named among the Ascent Top 100 Career Women in Africa 2026, recognised as Outstanding Woman in PR at the 2025 Women's Choice Awards, and counted among the Top 10 Women in PR in Africa by Africa PR Week. Under her leadership, Global Media Alliance itself has been named one of Ghana's Top 10 PR agencies, a recognition documented on the Global Media Alliance newsroom.
From Nairobi to Accra
Emma Wenani's path into PR was not a straight line. She began in marketing, moved into HR for six years after relocating to Ghana, and only returned to communications when a leadership change at Global Media Alliance opened the door. She calls the detour a gift. Living in Ghana, she says, made her more agile and more culturally sensitive, and shaped her into someone more resilient to whatever came her way.
She still identifies proudly as Kenyan, joking that she sometimes forgets she is not Ghanaian. It is a small line, but it says something larger about the woman: someone equally at home flying one flag while building a legacy in another country entirely.
Building a PR powerhouse
Ask Emma Wenani what a typical week looks like and she laughs. No two days are the same, she says, let alone a week. Her role spans strategic leadership, client relationships, mentoring her team and scouting new business, all while keeping Global Media Alliance ahead of an industry that moves fast.
She is also part of the team behind the World PR Day Festival, one of the continent's biggest platforms for the profession, recently expanded through a partnership with UniMAC to bring academia and industry closer together. The vision, in her words, was simple: to build a platform where practitioners, students, business leaders and policymakers could learn from one another, and to prove that Africa has exceptional PR talent worth championing.
Her biggest frustration with the industry has stayed the same for years, the idea that PR is spin. At its core, she insists, PR is about building relationships, managing reputation and helping organisations make better decisions through effective communication, and she wishes more people understood how much value that holds.
A believer in other people's dreams
Global Media Alliance was the first organisation in Ghana to mark World PR Day and Emma's Team has led it ever since, building that early internal observance into the World PR Day Festival, now one of the continent's biggest platforms for the profession.
That instinct to build, and to build with the people around her, is the same one I experienced outside of PR altogether. My own advocacy work runs through International Women's Day activities, and Emma Wenani has always supported it, giving me the room to flourish rather than treating it as a distraction from the day job. Bring her a good idea, and she does not simply nod along. She sees it through, and she gives you every resource she can to bring it to life. I have experienced that belief in other people's dreams firsthand.
The global observance itself has grown just as fast. World PR Day began in 2021 with roughly 3,500 practitioners across fifteen countries, and by 2025 had expanded to more than 20,000 practitioners across 66 countries. This year's global theme, The Golden Age of Strategic PR, sits alongside Global Media Alliance's own festival theme, Reimagining PR, which the World PR Day Festival 2026 has built its sixth edition around.
The room-maker
Emma Wenani has mentored, by her own admission, countless young professionals, both formally and informally. She describes herself as a product of good mentorship and sees passing it on as a natural continuation, not an obligation. Her one condition is that the mentee must drive the relationship. When a mentee is focused and knows what they want, she says, her job becomes seamless.
I can vouch for what that mentorship looks like from the inside. Five months into my first job at Global Media Alliance Broadcasting Company, my boss resigned. Emma Wenani called me into her office and made me PR Manager for YFM, Happy FM and eTV Ghana. We know this is a lot, she told me, but I know you can do it. She reviewed our press releases and emails herself, line by line, even as Chief Director. When I once came to her with an issue that was weighing on me, all she said was, Bridget, don't succumb to bullies. That single sentence has stayed with me longer than any long speech could have.
What she hopes her mentees carry forward, in her own words, is professionalism, resilience and a commitment to excellence. Having worked under her, I can confirm it lands exactly as intended.
Women in the room, women in power
Emma Wenani is careful to separate representation from power. PR is one of the few industries where women are visible, she says, but visibility is not the same as women holding equal decision-making authority. True progress, in her view, only happens when women sit in leadership roles that actually shape outcomes.
Asked about the hardest professional moment she has faced as a woman in the industry, she does not reach for a dramatic story. Like many women in leadership, she says, there have been moments where she had to work harder to earn credibility, and those moments taught her resilience and the importance of letting her work speak for itself. Her advice to a young woman starting out in Accra, Nairobi or Lagos today is blunt; integrity, professionalism and hard work never go out of style, and the one rule worth breaking is waiting for permission before taking up space.
The person behind the PR
Outside the office, Emma Wenani is a self-confessed Manchester United fan who insists the loyalty has trained her for crisis communications, teaching her patience and the importance of community. Her personal PR masterclass pick is David Beckham, for his business mind and work ethic. Her favourite book, one she recommends to every young communicator, is Who Moved My Cheese by Dr Spencer Johnson.
She describes herself as a morning person who values relationships above strategy or storytelling as her real PR toolkit essential. When asked what she is most proud of across a journey that runs from Kenya to Ghana, from junior professional to Chief Director, award-winner and festival curator, she does not name a trophy. She names the woman she has become; someone determined, and someone who does not easily give up.
Her message to a young girl in Kisumu or Kumasi being told PR is not a serious career is characteristically direct; don't listen to the noise in your head saying you are not capable of doing it. Follow your dreams, work hard, and things will fall into place.
Why Her Space is celebrating her
Emma Wenani's success was never hers alone. She built a career, then spent it opening doors for the people who worked for her, reviewing their copy, correcting their instincts, and telling them plainly when they needed to hear it. This World PR Day, Her Space celebrates the PR leader whose real legacy is measured not only in the awards on her shelf, but in the number of communicators across Accra, Kumasi, Ho, Tamale, Koforidua and Takoradi who learned the profession at her side.
Originally published in B&FT Weekend as part of Bridget Mensah's Her Space column.
