Esther Armah

Esther A. Armah is CEO of The Armah Institute of Emotional Justice (The AIEJ), an international award-winning journalist, a playwright, an author, and an international speaker. The AIEJ is a global institute based in Accra, and working across Accra, New York, and London. It is the implementation home of Emotional Justice, a framework created by Esther and described as the future of DEI. The AIEJ devises, designs, and delivers projects, training, and thought leadership using storytelling as a strategy for structural change. They use mixed methodology, partnership, and innovation to devise, design, and deliver work in the U.S., the UK, Ghana, and Kenya, with a global team in Ghana, Chicago, and the UK.

The AIEJ’s bespoke Emotional Justice training has been used at Ivy League universities, by the grantees of foundations, by the CEOs of nonprofits, and her framework is taught by academics and used in activism. Emotional Justice does not center numbers that offer information, they center narrative that provides connection. Emotional Justice is a framework that provides connection into unknown, unfamiliar worlds as part of their process of making transformational change. Their training is bespoke designed and delivered by a global team in Ghana, the UK, and Chicago. The AIEJ trainings are: Emotional Justice Truth & Accountability Sessions, The Love Languages of Emotional Justice, Emotional Justice Consultation, and Circle of Willingness: We Are The Dismantlers We Have Been Waiting For. The training team uniquely includes artists as well as global educators and arts education specialists. Emotional Justice explores the power of the emotional to sustain inequitable harmful systems, unmoved by policy or public statement.

Esther’s Emotional Justice work has been featured at Stanford, Dartmouth, NYU, in the world of philanthropy, in grassroots organizing and activism, in The New York Times bestselling book “Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019,” and in publications in the U.S., the UK, and Ghana including The Guardian, Ebony.com, and Essence.com. Her Emotional Justice project led her to be Distinguished Activist in Residence for the 2022 spring semester at the NYU Center for Black Visual Culture.

GLOBAL REACH
Esther has lived and worked as a journalist in New York, Washington D.C., London, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria. In New York, she appeared on MSNBC, CNN, was host of Pacifica Radio WBAI’s Wake-Up Call, and led EAA Media Productions. In London, she worked with the British Broadcasting Corporation on radio and television both in front of and behind the mic and screen on radio and television. In Ghana, she has been a Media Communications lecturer teaching at African University College of Communications (AUCC), Webster Ghana, and used journalism to teach at Ashesi University; she has appeared on the major radio stations Citi FM, Joy FM, StarrFM, and 3FM; she had an Emotional Justice column in one of Ghana’s leading newspapers, Business & Financial Times; and she was a consultant working with multiple media houses including Joy FM, EIB Network, Business & Financial Times, Citi FM, and MG Digital. With EAA Media Productions, her team devised, designed, and culturalized campaigns including the U.S. Time’s Up Campaign creating #TimesUpGH — a nationwide campaign to stop gender violence in schools and introduce policy to standardize reporting violence procedures. She led a four-African-nation campaign — Time’s Up Afri Media / #TimesUpAfriMedia prompting women journalists and women-led organizations in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania to link arms and highlight the power of being African silence-breakers. The campaign was created by Esther Armah’s EAA Media Productions, with African Women in Media (AWiM), The Media Council of Kenya, Biola Alabi Media, and the Association of Media Women in Kenya (AMWiK).

THOUGHT LEADER
Esther is an international speaker who has appeared on stages in the U.S., the UK, and Africa including Omega Institute of Holistic Studies Women & Power Conference, Stanford, NYU, London, and Kenya’s African Women in Media Festival and Conference. She is the author of “Emotional Justice: A Roadmap for Racial Healing,” which features forewords by The New York Times bestselling authors Dr. Robin DiAngelo and Dr. Brittney Cooper. In New York, Armah led a five-year Emotional Justice Dialogue series engaging the worlds of academia, art, and activism to explore the power of the emotional to inform, influence, and shape politics.

PLAYWRIGHT and ESSAYIST
Esther has written five Emotional Justice plays that have been produced and performed in New York, Chicago, and Ghana. Her Emotional Justice essays have been published in books, including The New York Times bestseller “Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019”; “Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence”; and the award-winning “Love WITH Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse.” Esther’s Emotional Justice essays have been featured in publications including ‘WARSCAPES,’ Ebony.com, AlterNet, Essence.com, Gawker.com, and the Jay-Z “4:44 Syllabus.”

AWARDS WON
For her Emotional Justice work, Esther won the Community Healer Award at the 2016 Valuing Black Lives Global Emotional Emancipation Summit in Washington D.C., and she was named Most Valuable N.Y. Radio Host on The Nation magazine’s 2012 Progressive Honors List for her work on Pacifica Radio WBAI’s Wake-Up Call.