Maidie Arkutu is currently the Senior Vice President, New Business Development for Nutrifoods Ghana Ltd. (Olam & Sanyo Joint Venture). In this role, she is responsible for new product development for the snacks category and also for geographic expansion. Ms. Arkutu is also the past Vice President, Chairman and Managing Director of Unilever Francophone Africa. In this role, she led one of the 4 sub-Sahara Africa clusters for the Unilever Africa Group, managing over 10 French speaking countries and based in Abidjan. She was the Managing Director of Unilever Ghana prior to taking on the Francophone role. She held senior marketing roles across different African countries in her formative years with Unilever and The Coca-Cola Company.
A professional Marketer, Transformational Leader and International Executive, Ms. Arkutu has a PostGraduate Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (U.K Board). She also holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Business Economics with a minor in French, from Vesalius College, Belgium. Ms. Arkutu is currently a Non-Executive Board Member of GT Bank and a Steering Committee Member of the Skills Development Fund. At United Way Worldwide, she is a Member of the Leadership Council and the African Advisory Council. Ms. Arkutu is also a Stanford Seed Consultant, a role in which she volunteers to give free professional advice to small and medium size businesses in Africa.
Previous governance roles include: Lady Chair and Executive Board Member of the Executive Women Network (EWN), Non- Executive Board member at Barclays Bank Ghana Limited, Executive Board Member at Unilever Ghana Limited, Board Chair and Executive Board Member of Unilever Francophone Africa, Member of the BEEP Advisory Council and Corporate Advisory Group Member of the University of Ghana Business School.
Ms. Arkutu has been the recipient of several awards and recognitions, including the prestigious Marketing Woman of the Year (2015) at the Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana Awards and Outstanding Manufacturing Executive, Personal Products (2016) at the Feminine Ghana Achievement Awards. In 2017 she was awarded the Female Influential Leader Award by Ghana UK Based Achievements (GUBA), and Most Influential Woman in Business and Government in Ivory Coast and the West Africa sub-region by CEO Global. In 2018, the prestigious Jeune Afrique Magazine/ Africa Report Magazine named Ms. Arkutu as one of the Top 50 Most Influential Women in Business in Africa.
