Olanike A. Mensah is a sought-after global advisor, speaker, strategist, and founder of Mosaic Consulting - a firm that helps organizational leaders methodically, meaningfully, and measurably steward day-to-day employee experiences to shape the culture they say they want. For over 20 years, she has helped nonprofits, schools, and mission-driven companies decode pain points, codify what’s working, and turn it all into people-first strategies that boost impact and success. She is the creator of The Mosaic Method™, which uses research, science, and codified common sense to gather, analyze, and translate employee experience feedback into an actionable strategy that delivers sustained results.

As a trusted voice and advisor to forward-thinking nonprofits, B Corps, foundations, social impact businesses, and multi-national corporations, she leverages her distinctive blend of lived experience, senior executive insight, and deep cultural fluency to make lasting impact. She is frequently tapped for her insight on leadership, culture-building, people (workforce) analytics, DEI strategy, and organizational development and transformation.

She is uniquely positioned to write this book on belonging - not just as a researched concept, but as a lived and measurable practice.

Professional Background
Olanike’s career has spanned Fortune 50 companies, grassroots nonprofits, tech, public health, education, and global organizations. Her professional journey spans several continents and a wide range of sectors. She has led local nonprofits, advised national organizations, and served in senior executive roles for global firms. She’s served as a senior leader in human resources, workplace culture, and talent development. Notably, she was a Senior Vice President at Bank of America, a global Fortune 50 financial institution, in the technology and information security division, where she developed enterprise-wide change management initiatives, launched regional, national, and firm-wide diversity and inclusion strategies, led cross-functional teams, and developed and launched leadership and talent strategies across national and international teams. Earlier in her career, she held leadership roles in national and international nonprofit organizations such as Summer Search and buildOn, where she directed and trained teams, managed national talent strategies, launched leadership coaching programs, managed crises, and redesigned systems for equity, efficacy, and impact. Through her extensive career, she built systems that prioritize people without sacrificing results.

As the founder of Mosaic Consulting, she supports institutions ready to evolve their culture - not through performative pledges, but through tangible systems of care and accountability. She’s worked with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Inroads, the Major League Baseball Players Association, Bank of America, Queens University, Right to Dream, CollegeSpring, Pharmavite, Teach for America, The Levine Museum of the New South, PWC, the Transgender Law Center, and more. She’s an instructor in Inclusive Leadership and Change Management and was a facilitator and coach in the Full Potential Ventures’ leadership development program for emerging NGO leaders in South Africa.

She created The Mosaic Method™ to offer a research-based approach for gathering and leveraging people analytics to build and sustain thriving cultures of success, fueled by employee experiences of deep engagement, high belonging, and consistent equity. This book will serve as a powerful cornerstone of that mission.

A coach and certified B Leader, Olanike is credentialed to support organizations on their path to B Corp certification. She was inspired to pursue this, years after the seed was planted during her time working at one of the very first founding B Corps, Better World Books. Blending this with her professional background, Olanike works directly with executives and boards on aligning culture with purpose, vision, and performance. She frequently designs and leads board strategy sessions, staff retreats, and executive advising engagements for clients facing cultural misalignment, organizational transitions, or workplace equity-centered transformation efforts. She’s known for designing high-impact engagements and learning labs that unearth, then translate insight into action and impact.

She holds an Associate's degree in Liberal Arts from the Whitney M. Young Honors Program and a Bachelor’s in Business Management & Marketing from Kentucky State University, and a Master’s in Nonprofit Management from Eastern University, along with Executive Certificates from Cornell University in Change Management and Change Leadership, along with additional coursework in Executive Leadership and High-Performance Leadership. She’s a certified board member via a United Way program in Board Leadership and has completed several courses and training programs such as the Wharton Leadership Conference, Zenger Folkman, and Deloitte Community Leadership Forum.

Personal Story & Connection to the Book
Olanike’s approach to belonging is shaped not just by her credentials but by her lived experience as a third-culture kid, a multicultural human, and a person who has navigated the complexities of race, gender, and identity in her personal and professional life. She’s a lifelong observer of the “in-between” spaces where so many of us seek belonging but are rarely seen. She’s lived on multiple continents, moved between rooms of power and protest, and found home not in geography, but in shared values and courageous community. She knows what it means to feel like you belong everywhere and nowhere – and to learn, over time, how to build belonging from the inside out.

She has worked in organizations that called themselves inclusive but made her feel invisible. She has led teams in high-stake, high-pressure environments where psychological safety was scarce. And she sat in rooms where people who claimed to want change were still protecting the status quo. Her book brings together these insights – not to point fingers, but to offer readers the language, tools, and frameworks to create something better.

Her message is not just about inclusion or equity – it’s about true belonging: the kind that doesn’t ask people to shrink or shapeshift in order to be accepted, but invites them to be seen, heard, and valued as they are. It’s about being you, friend - straight up, no chaser!

When she’s not writing or working with clients, Olanike can be found watching a handful of deliciously frivolous TV shows, sneaking in a nap, on a tennis court, or hanging out with her family and shih-poo. She’s a fan of Hip Hop, R&B, and Rock Ballads, loves karaoke, and is never more than a few days away from fried plantain.

She is a daughter, sister, wife, mother, aunty, bestie, mentor, and friend to many, striving to be a beacon of love and belonging to them.

She hopes that this book amplifies one bold truth: Belonging isn’t something we earn by shrinking or striving. It’s something we can build together.