Ayolah Ibezim | Workforce and Career Development Manager
Ayolah joined Compass in October 2020 as a Financial Coach and currently serves as the Workforce and Career Development Manager. In this role she develop partnerships, resources, and referral systems to connect clients with employment and training resources and employment leads; develop and deliver workforce development training; and support coaches to build their capacity around career-building in their coaching practices with clients.
Ayolah's desire to pursue mission-driven work was ignited during a three-year volunteer stint with Health Leads, where she began as a Patient Advocate, connecting Greater Boston families with low incomes with various federal and local resources, such as housing vouchers, WIC, food pantries, local financial assistance grants, and many others. After one year, Ayolah moved on to being a Team Coordinator, where she supervised a small group of advocates, and then to Campus Coordinator, where she led recruitment for advocates and acted as a liaison between program management staff and advocates. It was during these years in college that Ayolah realized a love for increasing disenfranchised communities' access to resources and working with anti-poverty programs.
Most recently, Ayolah comes to Compass from Found In Translation, a Dorchester-based medical interpreter job training program for bilingual, mostly immigrant, women with low incomes. While there, she recruited for and managed the volunteer program, provided one-on-one career coaching for participants, taught professional development workshops, and streamlined the professional development curriculum.
Ayolah's professional background also includes her time spent working as a Mental Health Specialist for an inpatient psychiatric unit at McLean Hospital, where she served patients primarily diagnosed with depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. At McLean, Ayolah helped maintain a therapeutic milieu within the unit, created supportive relationships with patients, and facilitated group therapy sessions.
Ayolah is passionate about women's empowerment, decreasing mental health stigma, and community service. She enjoys bachata and salsa dancing, volunteering, singing, spending time with her sisters, and traveling.
Ayolah graduated from Boston University in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. She recently obtained a certificate in Nonprofit Management and Leadership with the Institute for Nonprofit Practice through Tufts University. Ayolah plans to pursue financial therapy and plans to open her own practice one day.