Bold ambition gets you moving. What decides whether it scales or stalls is everything in the middle: the government door that hasn't been opened, the partner who looks right but won't hold, the proof that lands in one country but won't travel.
Going bigger, faster, and bolder takes more than a strategy deck and a task manager. It takes an executive who has done it: for tech companies entering new markets, organisations in transition, and funders building what comes next.
Your product is ready. The market isn't moving. You need the government doors opened, local partners who hold, and proof that travels to the next market.
How we'd work →A new initiative that needs an executive to build it. A bridge leader during a search. Surge capacity for a critical phase. A fractional executive who steps in, leads, and hands over cleanly.
How we'd work →You're building a new initiative in emerging markets. You need someone who has delivered on the ground and will tell you what will actually hold before the money moves.
How we'd work →For every innovation with a bold ambition for impact, there are a number of things in the middle that determine whether it scales or stalls.
Emily brings the experience and judgment to go Bigger. Faster. Bolder.
These aren't hypotheticals. They're patterns I've seen across 40+ countries.
You've got the technology. You know the opportunity is real. But the proof is stuck. Wrong local partner, door that won't open, regulatory barrier nobody told you about.
Most pilots fail not because the technology doesn't work. They fail because scale was treated as a later problem: who implements, who pays, and how the model adapts as you learn. Proof designed to stand still doesn't travel.
The closed-door session where the minister makes a decision. The stage at Davos where the narrative gets set. Both matter. I've designed and facilitated both.
The AI in the classroom only works when you've also solved the electricity, the devices, the internet, and the government sign-off. I'll tell you what your slide deck is missing.
You need someone with executive judgment to step in as a fractional or interim executive — as a bridge leader, as surge capacity, or as exec leadership for a new offer still building to full-time scale.
Pilot purgatory: the pilot worked, the report was glowing, and you're still piloting. Some teams never named who implements at scale or who pays when the donor money stops. Plenty did, and stalled anyway: adapting too slowly, misreading the politics, getting the local-global balance wrong, missing the enablers the technology depends on. The proof was never designed to travel.
Proof to Power is a 10-minute diagnostic built on 20 years of watching what scales and what stalls. Answer honestly. Get a straight readout: where you're strong, where you're most at risk of stalling, and the three questions to ask next.
You want the expertise in the room to advise decisions. Someone who has navigated all of this before and helps you make the right calls on location, partners, proof design, and global positioning.
When an organisation needs executive leadership for a defined period. A bridge leader during a search. Exec capacity for a new offer still building toward a full-time hire. Surge leadership for the moment that decides the next chapter.
I've spent 20 years delivering for leaders whose ambitions change countries. A Nobel laureate. A three-time prime minister. A Fortune 100 tech executive. I deliver at both altitudes: in the room where the decision is made and on the ground where it has to work.
Each case designed and led by Emily across her 20 years in emerging markets. Proof and evidence that travels. Positioning that starts from Day 1. A path to scale built in, not bolted on.
Her framework for how it works: Prove it. Position it. Power it.
Co-designed the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge inside State House. Launched in four months. Cost cap built in from day one. Survived COVID. Scaled to 134,000 children across every district.
Built the partnership at TBI that brought Starlink to 50 schools in Rwanda, then 40 health centres, then five more countries.
Read more →Designed the 117 hotline during Sierra Leone's Ebola crisis. A decade later, it's still running as the country's national emergency system.
Brokered the TBI–Planet partnership to embed satellite imagery into Zanzibar's government. Not a pilot. Working infrastructure across 10+ ministries.
Read more →Facilitated a closed-door session at the World Government Summit where a tech exec and a minister unblocked a regulatory issue on the spot. That moment opened connectivity for an entire country.
Executive leadership for bold ambitions in emerging markets.
Bigger. Faster. Bolder.
Home sits between West Africa and the Levant. The work spans continents.
I've spent 20 years at two altitudes — in the room when heads of state made the call, and on the ground when it had to actually work. The through-line is bold optimism in the face of hard things. And embracing the beauty in all the middle.
I'm Emily Stanger Sfeile.
At the end of 2025, I left my executive job to build EmBold and a life that looks like what I believe: bold partners, board work, and ventures of my own. Currently, I'm serving as Executive Director for Emerging Public Leaders on a fractional, interim basis.
Newest project: Building experiences for mission-driven professionals looking for more than a tourist destination — international trips that combine bold living with beautiful experiences.
The work and the life are the same story.
During maternity leave in the middle of a pandemic, I took on global leadership at the Tony Blair Institute, partnering across science, medicine, and politics to shape global health security. Then leadership in TBI's technology-for-development offering. Then built TBI's global partnerships with technologists and innovators to help countries govern in the age of AI.
The work widened: from serving one government to connecting many of them with the world's boldest technology companies. Fifteen-plus partnerships built from scratch. Thirty-six tech-enabled projects across 20 governments. The ones I'm proudest of started as improbable ideas — Starlink in 50 Rwandan schools, then 40 health centres, then five more countries. Satellite imagery working across 10+ ministries in Zanzibar.
At the B20 in Indonesia, I launched public-private health partnerships to a global business audience. At a WEF GovTech event in Ukraine, I spoke on the opportunity AI presents to reimagine government. At UNGA, the World Government Summit, and Davos, I chaired roundtables where heads of state and CEOs build partnerships that change countries.
All bold and pragmatic. All with the leaders and the do-ers: tech CEOs, heads of state, and those at the front-lines of impact. Every partnership worked for the same reason — a global partner willing to move fast, a government that owned it, and someone trusted by both sides to hold the middle.
The conversations I care about don't end when the panel does. They start there. And I led the work that delivers it.
In 2014, Ebola hit Sierra Leone. As others flew out, I flew in.
I helped design the National Ebola Response Centre. Built the 117 emergency call line — it's still Sierra Leone's national emergency system a decade later. Ran weekly strategic briefings for President Koroma. And when the outbreak ended, I stayed. We designed the recovery: getting children back in school, rebuilding healthcare, restarting the economy.
Under President Bio, the work deepened. I advised on his flagship human capital development portfolio — education, nutrition, healthcare for children — and became the only non-Sierra Leonean named as a presidential appointee into Sierra Leone's COVID response.
I co-designed the Education Innovation Challenge inside State House. It reached 134,000 children across every district.
Sierra Leone is the country my husband and children call their own. Serving it directly was the honor of my career.
It started with a promise. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first female head of state, pledged to put women in their proper place across Liberia's economy and government. I was 24 at the Harvard Kennedy School. I sought a path to support her government. And then I designed and delivered the programs to make her promise real.
Over six years, we built it from scratch. Cross-border trade networks. Savings and loan associations. Business training across 38 markets. Adult literacy. Extension services for women farmers. The programming reached over 40,000 women, and lending groups for business women ended with average annual savings of $430 per woman — in a country where GDP per capita was $414.
Forbes 30 Under 30 came from this work. The real credential was simpler: I'd learned what it takes to build something from within a government, for a President with huge ambitions, and in a place where nothing is handed to you.
