Phyllis Christian


Phyllis M. Christian is a Ghanaian lawyer and consultant who has been called "one of the most influential women in Ghana". A lawyer by training, she is also the founder, chief executive officer and managing consultant of ShawbellConsulting, based in Accra. Her grandfather George Alfred Grant, popularly known as Paa Grant, was one of the founding fathers of Ghana.

Background

Education and early career

Phyllis Maria Christian was born in Ghana, the elder daughter of high-court lawyer Howard J. Christian and his wife Sarah, and the fourth of her parents' five children. Her father was the son of Dominica-born barrister George James Christian. She was educated at Holy Child School in Cape Coast, and from 1974 to 1977 at the University of Ghana, Legon, where she earned a B.A. in Philosophy and Literature, before going on to study and qualify as a lawyer at Ghana School of Law.
She was then employed providing legal and other professional services in local and international corporations, and in 1983 went to the US, where she lived for a while in Boston. On returning to Ghana, she worked as a senior manager at Price Waterhouse and Executive Director at Ernst & Young.

ShawbellConsulting

In June 2002 Christian founded ShawbellConsulting, an Accra-based company providing legal and management consultancy services. In her role as chief executive officer, Christian, has led the company to win a number of awards, being adjudged best law consulting firm of the year at the Offshore Ghana Oil and Gas Awards in 2014–15, among other accolades.

Other activities

As an advocate of incentives for indigenous firms, Christian has written for such outlets as the Daily Graphic, and endorses plans for legislation "to require that at least 70 per cent of all government, taxpayer-financed contracts and procurements be executed by local corporate entities" and a policy requiring a specified percentage be sourced "from entities owned by women, persons with disability, and those established under the Youth Enterprise Fund".
In a voluntary capacity she has been a board member of a number of organisations, including Sharecare Ghana and the independent not-for-profit Institute for Democratic Governance.
Christian appeared in the documentary film The Election Petition, which deals with the processes leading up to, during and after the election petition that was filed after Ghana's 2012 general elections.
She chairs the Ethics Committee of the Ghana Football Association.