Khadija Gbla
Inspirational Speaker & Facilitator | Empowering Refugee Narratives
About
Khadija Gbla is an award-winning inspirational speaker and cross-cultural consultant from Sierra Leone. As a former refugee, she shares powerful stories of resilience and reinvention, empowering audiences to overcome adversity.
Gbla's TEDx talks have reached millions, offering frameworks for embracing diversity and self-discovery. Her keynotes provide fresh perspectives on the future of work, blending personal experience with practical strategies for unlocking human potential.
Talks1
My mother’s strange definition of empowerment
Khadija Gbla grew up caught between two definitions of what it means to be an “empowered woman.” While her Sierra Leonean mother thought that circumsizing her — and thus stifling her sexual urges — was the ultimate form of empowerment, her culture as a teenager in Australia told her that she deserved pleasure and that what happened to her was called “female genital mutilation.” In a candid and funny talk, she shares what it was like to make her way in a “clitoris-centric society,” and how she works to make sure other women don’t have to figure this out. (Warning: This talk contains hard-to-hear details.)
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