Conversation with Ambassador Yvette Stevens
Here is Episode 11 of The Fading Causes Podcast where I sit down with Ambassador Yvette Stevens.
What drives a woman to choose the colder, harder road — to study in the Soviet Union during the Cold War when the world said “go West, young lady”? To wire a nation’s power grid when no one believed a woman should or could? To serve at the frontline of humanitarian crises and development aspirations? To speak truth to power in the corridors of the UN? And still find laughter and hope amid life’s ironies and misfortunes?
The theme of our conversation is “Breaking Open Barriers” and Yvette has barged through many with her unique mix of skills, defiance, and irreverence: countering misogyny and prejudice, navigating religion, becoming Sierra Leone’s first female engineer, surviving marriage into a controversial political family, rising above personal tragedies, battling international bureaucracy and, along the way, evolving some trenchant views about ethnicity and violence, democracy and governance.
What did it take to break barriers in a man’s world? How did her faith, humour, and fierce independence carry her through decades of diplomacy and disruption? And why does she now joke about colour-coordinating her own coffin?
Watch/listen to this fearless, funny, and deeply human conversation about ambition, resilience, and what it means to stay true to yourself, even when the world keeps changing the rules.
Yvette’s message will strike a chord in the hearts and minds of all making their way with their own personal and professional struggles in today’s world.
