Raquel Wilson

Raquel Wilson is a strategist, entrepreneur, and advocate for equitable and sustainable communities with a career spanning nearly two decades across international development and strategic communications.She holds an MBA from Imperial College London, where her studies focused on strategies that balance people, planet, and profit, and a Bachelor of Science in New Media from Indiana University. She also completed the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa's training for African Women Investors.As Founder and Managing Partner of Building Equity, she leads a firm reimagining how wealth and opportunity circulate through cities. Building Equity designs new models of ownership and governance that make growth more inclusive and builds regenerative urban economies through investment and skills development.Raquel also serves as Senior Advisor at Baobab Consulting, a strategy and innovation firm advancing Africa's growth and global influence. In this role, she advises on business development, institutional partnerships, and strategic positioning, guiding Baobab's work with multilateral organizations, governments, and social enterprises across Africa and its diaspora.She is the CEO of Africa Means Business, a business advisory helping companies navigate Africa's rapidly expanding markets, and the Founder of Gather Global, a leadership accelerator for women disrupting the world.Her private sector work spans early-stage venture, infrastructure, and sustainability. She has sourced and evaluated high-growth opportunities for Roselake Ventures, a venture fund investing in African startups, supported investment visibility for Senegal's National Office of Sanitation, co-founded Jetstream Africa, an Accra-based logistics platform simplifying exports for African suppliers, and launched the Dakar Farmers Market, a community enterprise supporting local food producers.

As a Diplomat with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Raquel helped launch the first online platform for monitoring hate crimes and coordinated multi-stakeholder engagement on tolerance and non-discrimination. Her international development experience also includes managing complex, multi-partner programs for the United Nations, UNICEF, and USAID. As Head of Strategic Communications for the Somalia Stabilization Initiative, she designed a national radio program connecting rural women with essential government services.At the African Development Bank, Raquel led narrative development for the ADF-17 replenishment campaign, producing investment cases and donor materials that contributed to multi-billion-dollar commitments. Her work connected capital, policy, and purpose, amplifying the impact of concessional finance and positioning Africa's markets for global investors. She also contributed to strategic communications for the Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Multi-Donor Trust Fund and led digital engagement for the Africa Climate Summit and the African Emergency Food Production Facility.Raquel is the recipient of the New York City Partnership for Parks Grant for her program How to Build a Community, which focused on civic engagement and neighborhood revitalization.She is the Co-Editor of No Tees Please: Why Africa Aid Campaigns #FAIL, a crowdsourced inquiry into the practices of disadvantageous aid campaigns, and managed Social Media Week Lagos' #55FORWARD initiative, bringing together ambassadors from 55 African nations to discuss how they use social media to meet the needs of a growing youth population.Known for bridging people, ideas, and capital, Raquel builds systems that circulate opportunity. She continues to mentor women and emerging leaders committed to building more inclusive and regenerative futures.