Lucy Quist
Global Executive, Author of The Bold New Normal
Lucy Quist is a C-suite telecommunications and financial services executive. She was most recently Managing Director at Morgan Stanley serving as the Global Head of Firm (Business) Resilience. She is widely known for being the first Ghanaian woman to lead a multinational telecommunications company as the former CEO of Airtel in Ghana.
She spent 11 years of her executive career working across Africa mainly in telecommunications.
The rest of her nearly three-decade long career was spent in Europe, in the automotive and financial services industries. She is adept at working at scale across geographical locations in complex organisations. She is the author of the book, ‘The Bold New Normal’ and the convenor of the conference of the same title.
Lucy is a thought leader and international speaker focused on the Leadership, Change, Equity and STEM advocacy. She passionately believes that business done with excellence and integrity is a vehicle for positive societal change. She is a co-founder of the Executive Women Network and served as the Vice President of FIFA's normalisation committee in Ghana.
She is a chartered electrical and electronic engineer with a first-class honours degree from the University of East London and holds an MBA from INSEAD in France.
She serves on the boards of INSEAD and Mercy Ships. In 2022 she joined the board of Margins ID Group. She is an advisory board member of Yemaachi Biotech and Ethical Apparel Africa. She is the recipient of multiple honours by reputable organisations for her exceptional strategic insights, delivery of transformative business results and dedication to growing people within her organisations. Notable among these are CIMG Marketing Woman of the year, Telecom CEO of the Year, CSR CEO of the year and the Corporate Leadership Award at the Ghana Legacy Awards.
On the 20th of January 2020 she moderated the UK - Africa Investment Summit hosted by the then British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and attended by 21 African Heads of State (https://youtu.be/Vz43FAea7W0). She has spoken on platforms such as TEDx EUSTON, Wharton Africa Business Forum, the Sanford C. Bernstein Centre for Leadership & Ethics at Columbia Business School, McGill University and INSEAD’s Africa business forum. She spoke at the GSMA’s Mo-bile World Congress in 2017.
In 2016 she was featured on the BBC’s Power Women series as one of the top businesswomen driving transformational change in Africa.