I like reading, a lot! I read anything, and everything. I also like listening to classical music. I find joy in catching up with my friends and class… - Elsie Effah Kaufmann

I am also the host for a science quiz program called the National Science and Math Quiz, for secondary schools in Ghana. You will be amazed at what happens in this program, haha. So this is a month-long televised Science competition where all schools come together to find out who wins for that year. The whole country comes to a stand-still, everybody is watching because everyone is affiliated in one way or another to a school. My purpose here is to make people understand that you don’t have to be a science student to enjoy sciences. The applications of science are reachable and everywhere around us.

If you follow my path you will see that I have been a pioneer in most of things that I do. So when I start a project, I have a vision for it. And as you can imagine, I work with teams because I enjoy maximising the synergy that comes from individuals from different backgrounds. When assembling my teams, I give people chances, I give everyone the benefit of the doubt but I have unfortunately been disappointed in the past. I have worked with people who haven’t understood my vision sometimes, there are some who have worked hard to undermine my abilities. I don’t know if this has been because I was young or a woman!

I remember for the first time in a science class I had a chance to design my own experiment as opposed to following instructions from a teacher. All this was challenging to me at first but I adjusted pretty well. By the time I was leaving, my thinking was completely different from what it was when I had just joined.