Agapi Gessesse is a national systems leader working at the intersection of innovation, economic mobility, and institutional power. She builds platforms, partnerships, and policy pathways that expand access to opportunity  particularly for communities historically locked out of it.

As CEO of the Coalition of Innovation Leaders Advancing Respect (CILAR), Agapi is leading a cross-sector movement to equip 100,000 Canadians with applied AI and future-focused workforce skills. She works alongside corporate executives, government leaders, and community institutions to design practical, equitable pathways into the innovation economy.

Previously, Agapi served as Executive Director of the CEE Centre for Young Black Professionals, where she expanded national partnerships, scaled multi-million-dollar programming, and strengthened CEE’s position as one of Canada’s most influential platforms for Black talent development. She is also the Founder of Lehizibu Strategy & Consulting Group, advising nonprofits, governments, and corporations on inclusive innovation, governance transformation, and strategic growth.

The daughter of Ethiopian refugee parents and raised by a single mother in Scarborough, Agapi’s leadership is shaped by lived experience as much as institutional strategy. Her work is grounded in one belief: systems do not change by accident they change when people are willing to redesign them.

A sought-after speaker and media commentator, Agapi has appeared on CTV National News, CBC News, BNN Bloomberg, Breakfast Television, and in The Globe and Mail. Her leadership has been recognized with WXN’s Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100, the Harry Jerome Decade Leader Award, YWCA Woman of Distinction, Top Black Women to Watch in Canada, and the Dial Mover in Tech recognition.

Across every chapter of her work, Agapi champions one purpose:
Agapi’s work is anchored in a single purpose: to design systems where opportunity is created by intention, not chance, and where access is the rule not the exception.