Naana Orleans-Amissah

Born in Germany, educated in Japan and the United Kingdom, Naana Orleans-Amissah has an unwavering Ghanaian identity. Her professional career spans 2 decades as a brand, communications and creative strategist. A graduate of the LSE, she also holds a Financial Times Non-Executive Director’s Master’s Diploma. She started her career at Unilever.  

She has both client and agency experience and has worked on and across four continents for companies and brands as diverse as glue, JWT, Karmarama, Dove, Hilton, O2, the Army, and Jaguar, Crabtree & Evelyn. She has attended the sought-after Google Creative Academy in Palo Alto. Elsewhere she has taught in Ghana at Publicis/Origin8; in the UK for Create Jobs, CreatED and the Bakkavor Board of Trustees; in Richmond, VA, USA for Hilton Hotels; and at EY in London. 

She is the founder of her own consultancy, NOA.  Naana strongly believes in the concept of “Each One, Teach One” and is a regular mentor. She has gone on to found Forge by NOA – a mentoring experience that guides young businesses and creatives. It provides practical, inspired and challenging Masterclasses and Workshops that unlock, upskill and sustain creative potential.  

As a poet, cultural observer and obsessive lover of the arts, Naana is interested in how stories — including personal myths — are formed, told and repurposed; the power they hold as they are repeated — personally and publicly — and how this can nourish or hinder the creative practice.  

This is Naana’s first trusteeship at New Writing North.  She strongly believes creative, communicative and artistic experience are additive skills that encourage the kind of multiplicity of perspective and robust challenge that make for a healthy, successful board.