Draft:May-Marie Duwai-Sowa

• Comment: Primary sources do not establish notability per WP:GNG. The one secondary source (CBC) alone is not enough. DoubleGrazing (talk) 12:00, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

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May-Marie Duwai-Sowa is a Sierra Leonean-Canadian diplomat, diversity and equity consultant and entrepreneur living in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She is the Sierra Leone government's Special Envoy for International Relations, Trade and Investment (SEIRTI), based in downtown Hamilton. She is currently the only representative of the Sierra Leone government stationed in Canada. Duwai-Sowa has formerly been an employee with the City of Hamilton, the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion and McMaster University specializing in the areas of diversity, equity and inclusion. She is also currently leading the diversity, equity and inclusion portfolio at LifeLabs (Canada).

Early life and education

May-Marie Duwai-Sowa was born July 18, 1977 in the city of Bo, Sierra Leone. Her mother is Rhoda Kargobai, and her father was Henry Moses-Nuyaba. She was raised by her mother and stepfather, Josiah Karobai, who were civil servants with the Sierra Leone government. She attended Annie Walsh Memorial School in Freetown, graduating in 1993.

In 1994, Duwai-Sowa enrolled as an undergraduate in the sociology program at Fourah Bay College, which is part of the University of Sierra Leone, in Freetown. Her studies were interrupted by the Sierra Leone civil war, which lasted approximately a decade and left 50,000 people dead and another 500,000 people displaced.

In early 1999, as the civil war reached Freetown, rebel fighters arrived at Duwai-Sowa's family home twice in attempts to harm the family. In the first instance, most of the family members were already hiding out in another relative's house. The rebel fighters were persuaded to leave the house by Duwai-Sowa's stepfather. On the second occasion, Duwai-Sowa was forced to hide under the bed in an upstairs bedroom when rebel fighters entered the house. A priest who was at the house convinced the rebels to leave before any of the family members suffered harm.

After the second incident, Duwai-Sowa fled to New Jersey to live with her aunt and uncle, Allan and Margaret Barnett. She enrolled at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ, and graduated magna cum laude in 2000 with a degree in sociology. She was also granted asylum by the United States.

In 2003, Duwai-Sowa moved to Canada and enrolled in the Master's program of sociology and international development at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario. She obtained her Master's degree with honours in 2005.

Employment history

In 2006, Duwai-Sowa was hired as a community developer with the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, a charitable organization that works to make Hamilton more inclusive and responsive to diversity.

In 2009, she was hired by the City of Hamilton. She was the first person to hold the newly-created position of accessibility and equity specialist. Duwai-Sowa then joined McMaster University in 2017 as an employment equity specialist. She has also been an economic development advisor with Ontario's Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. Prior to arriving in Canada, she was a family service specialist with the New Jersey State Division of Youth and Family Services, and a refugee case manager with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services in New Jersey.

On Feb. 6, 2023, Sierra Leone's President, Julius Bio, named Duwai-Sowa as the country's first Special Envoy for International Relations, Trade and Investment (SEIRTI). She decided to locate the office in a former brush factory turned office building at the corner of King Street East and West Avenue in downtown Hamilton. The goal of the SEIRTI office is to establish and develop stronger diplomatic and economic ties between Sierra Leone and Canada. Currently, trade between the two countries is rather modest. Canada exported about $10 million (Cdn) worth of goods to Sierra Leone in 2022, compared to the nearly $700 billion (Cdn) worth of goods exported from Canada to the U.S. in 2023.

Duwai-Sowa is also the principal consultant at SierraCan Consulting and SalPro Consulting. She is also the founder and president of SierraCan Institute, and was the founder and publisher of Illuminessence Magazine.

Among Duwai-Sowa's accomplishments, she was named one of Canada's top 100 Accomplished Black Canadian Women in 2020. She was also the winner of Rider University's Sociological Award for Social Commitment, as well as the Diversity Champion Award in 2014 from the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion and the Bravo Excellence Award from Ontario's Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. Duwai-Sowa was also a nominee for the City of Hamilton's City Manager Award for Public Service Excellence.