Agitu Wodajo (PhD) has more than thirty years of extensive experience in the areas of women empowerment, healthcare, community/economic development, and social policy. The NGOs she founded in both Ethiopia and the United States helped underprivileged women through services that build self-sufficiency, and policy-change advocacy that lift barriers.

In Ethiopia, she played an instrumental role in the establishment of the first of its kind ministry of women’s affairs in 1991. She was one of the fifteen women who drafted the first of its kind national policy on Ethiopian women in 1992. In Minnesota, she participated in the drafting and testified at the Senate hearing of the bill that was enacted in August 2004, exempting foreign-qualified nurses in Minnesota from the CGFNS certification process that obstructed them from practicing nursing. She also played a substantial role in the new rule that was officially adopted by the Minnesota Board of Barber and Cosmetologist Examiners on May 15, 2006, exempting hair braiders from state cosmetology licensing requirements.

Wodajo has received awards and recognitions from the governor of Minnesota, Metropolitan State University, the Department of Homeland Security, and KARE 11 News for her commitment to bringing about a positive change in the immigrant community of the Twin Cities metro area. She has travelled extensively for study tours, trainings, international conferences, and workshops, and has witnessed firsthand the need to address our shared problems. She is the author of The Secret to Finishing Well/Quest for Authentic Leadership, and her recently released memoir “A Purposeful Life” Her next book titled “Building Healthy Marriage and Families/Prevention and Cure” is in process.

She now resides in Atlanta, Georgia where she spends her time writing and serving on a non-profit organization that she founded, Holistic Freedom International Inc. board as a president. Wodajo pledges to continue the good work until her last breath: “Here I am in Atlanta, Georgia, embarking on the last phase of my life’s journey with renewed energy. God, who used seniors like Moses and Joshua, gave me a new assignment in my retirement age—serving Him through a new nonprofit that He had me start and writing books. And I am still as strong as when I started this journey, like Joshua said, ‘As yet I am as strong this day as on the day that Moses sent me; just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war, both for going out and for coming in.’”