Hello, I am Arlette,

Creator of the NextStep Philanthropy Framework (NSPF)
Founder of TELEP Network

I didn’t enter philanthropy through the front door.
I took the side path.
And when no door appeared, I built a way in.

I’m not one for waiting around to be invited.
When I see something missing, I create it.

A lifetime ago, I launched the K-Connexion, a consultancy for African fashion designers who wanted to export to the U.S.—because I was tired of watching African brilliance be excluded from the racks and runways.
Years later, when my biracial children were small and couldn’t find themselves in the pages of picture books, I wrote stories for them. I became a children book author, and gave them a superhero who looked like them: an African girl with power in her name and story in her veins. When I felt that African women’ ordinary and extra-ordinary stories needed to be broadcasted to the world, I organized the TEDxCadjehounWomen conferences.

That’s always been my way. I spot the gap. I name the silence.
And then I fill it with something that speaks to who we are.

I started my career at Procter & Gamble, learning the language of global trade. I was trained as a trainer and left to create two businesses of my own.
I’ve trained workforces, supported African creatives, and interpreted global diplomacy, without formal certification, but with a fluency born of attention, rigor, and love of learning.

I became a communications professional while doing the work for seven years on USAID projects across Africa.
I’ve never waited for a title to tell me who I was. I practiced until it became undeniable.

And now, after nearly five years immersed in the world of fundraising, I’ve built the NextStep Philanthropy Framework (NSPF).
Because I got tired of watching African organizations shrink themselves to fit inside donor boxes that were never built for them.
Because I believe in a different kind of philanthropy, one that begins with proximity, not paperwork. With partnership, not power plays.

The NSPF isn’t just a framework. It’s a quiet rebellion. A strategy for liberation.
It says: we can design better systems.
We can lead them.
We already are.

I don’t hold traditional credentials. What I hold is experience that spans continents, industries, and identities.
I’ve lived the very gaps I now work to close.
And I’ve turned those gaps into bridges, again and again.

If you're here, maybe you're ready to build something different, too.
Something truer. Something rooted.
Something that belongs to us.

Welcome. The work begins here.