Faithful Disruption: Ancestral Intelligence, Neurodivergence, and Leading Whole
A live conversation with Anwulika Okonjo, developmental leadership coach and founder of Ijeruka, and Aaronde Seckou Creighton, executive coach, leadership strategist, and Originator of 4th & Hawthorne.
Most leadership development asks you to build new capacities on top of who you already are. Rarely does it ask: what if the way you naturally perceive, process, and move through the world is itself a form of intelligence your organisation doesn't yet know how to value?
Aaronde Seckou Creighton has spent over two decades guiding transformative growth in leaders and organisations — including as the first Chief Diversity Officer at The Leadership Circle, partnering with Fortune 500 companies across industries. As a Black neurodivergent professional, his work isn't just about helping leaders perform better within existing systems. It's about helping them lead from who they actually are.
→ This session will expand the way you think about what counts as intelligence, what "whole leadership" actually demands, and what becomes possible when ancestral knowing and neurodivergent perception are treated as strategic resources rather than things to manage.
What This Conversation Explores
In this conversation, Anwulika and Aaronde will think together in real time about:
Intelligence beyond the default settings: How organisations systematically undervalue the forms of perception, processing, and relational capacity that don't fit dominant models of leadership — and what it costs them
Neurodivergence as faithful disruption: What neurodivergent professionals see, sense, and know that neurotypical frameworks routinely miss — and why this matters for organisations navigating complexity
Ancestral intelligence as living infrastructure: How the knowledge systems, practices, and ways of being carried forward by African and diasporic traditions equip leaders for the exact challenges that contemporary playbooks struggle with
Leading whole in systems designed for fragments: The real work of bringing all of who you are into rooms that were built for a narrower version — and what it takes to hold that without depleting yourself
From accommodation to architecture: Moving beyond "inclusion" as a concession toward designing leadership cultures that are structurally capable of holding the full range of human intelligence
What to expect
At the Edge is a horizon-scanning conversation series with renowned minds and practitioners on the inner life of leadership and our changing world.
Deeper Engagement
Members of the Ijeruka Village will be able to contribute questions during the session and continue the reflection afterward within our digital campus.
You're welcome in the room.