PROFILE

Maria Louisa (ML) Brookshire, MBA (aka Mona Lisa Brookshire née Blay-Miezah) is known professionally for her intellectual achievements and professional accolades in Marketing Management, Brand Development & General Management.

ML has worked for MBNA America Bank (now Bank of America) and BellSouth Mobility/Cingular Wireless (now AT&T Mobility), General Electric, Delphi Corporation / General Motors, Wolters Kluwer (Bear Stearns Office on Wall Street), and Coca Cola. She also recently worked at GLO Mobile Ghana Ltd. as their Head of Advertising.

At the age of 32, she became the youngest, and only female to be named as the Chief Marketing Officer at a telecommunication conglomerate in Uganda, East Africa.

ML continues to work as a Marketing Consultant to troubled multinational firms in Europe, the Middle-East and Sub-Saharan Africa. She has endeavored to create innovative solutions that allow telecom businesses to embrace cutting edge technology and utilize online channels of distribution to maximize revenue.

Through creative ingenuity, entrepreneurial vision and solid marketing strategies, she launched simultaneously two companies in 2006 while working on her Six Sigma Certification from GE; (a) SkyeRaine XChange (SRX), a Global Career Placement & Human Resources Consultancy and (b) Kulture Shock Productions (KSP), a subsidiary company specializing in Urban Entertainment and Events Planning in the United States.

ML attended Wesley Girls’ High School in Ghana for her O’ Levels, as well as Achimota Secondary School for her A’ Levels; and continued at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia with full academic scholarship for her undergraduate degree. She also acquired an M.B.A. degree when she graduated as a “Whirlpool Journey to Excellence Scholar” from Clark Atlanta University’s Master of Business Administration program in 2005 (also on full academic scholarship).

In 2008, She was documented as one of the first Ghanaian-American females to be featured in EBONY magazine for her career achievements as a marketer. She was featured in Canoe Quarterly Magazine, Business Week, Silo Breaker, Mobile News, Technology Digital e-Columns, Green Telecom Publications, Golf 100 Magazine, Energy Harvesting Journal, Reader’s Digest, MENSA USA Publications, African Business News, Marketing Africa Magazine,
African Woman Magazine, on CNBC Africa and other international TV, Radio and Print Media.

She has been recognized by other publications and international organizations including MENSA, (an organization for individuals with high IQs), just like her father, the late Dr John Ackah Blay-Miezah Sr. aka Nana Ackah Yansu II.

ML married Alvin Ray Brookshire in 1999; they have two children; Skye and Raine Brookshire. She also plays the piano and is fluent in three (3) languages. She enjoys writing poetry, watching plays, collecting quotes and reading Shakespearean Literature.

“I want to leave my mark – a BOLD footprint in my academic, professional, entrepreneurial and philanthropic aspirations (for after all what else should be expected of me!?!)” ML Brookshire, MBA (CNBC Interview)

Favorite Quotes

“Far better it is to DARE mighty things, to WIN glorious triumphs (even though checkered by failure), than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows not VICTORY nor DEFEAT.” ~Teddy Roosevelt

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” … “As a man thinketh, so is he”, … “Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit” (Napoleon Hill)

“Tis nothing good nor bad, it is your thinking that makes it so” (Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s
Dream – Ariel)

“Be the Change you want to see in the World” (Gandhi)

“I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood whose feelings are all hurt about it. When discriminated against, I’m merely astonished–how can anyone deny themselves the pleasure of MY company?” — Zora Neale Hurston