Shadrack Osei Frimpong is a global leader and academic whose work explores the science and practice of engagement in public health, medicine, and international development. Fueled by his background in rural Ghana, Frimpong is a triple threat to the problems his efforts address: he’s lived through them (from birth), studied them, and taken them on.
A son of a peasant (cocoa farmer) and a charcoal seller, he grew up without running water and electricity in rural Ghana. As a child, his legs were nearly amputated after contracting a river infection. Yet he became the first person from his village to attend college in the US, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) with the $150,000 President’s Engagement Prize (PEP), one of Penn’s highest honors. With the PEP, he pioneered the trailblazing community engagement model, farm-for-impact.
Shadrack has also founded and led several for-profit and non-profit firms. Learn more.
For his efforts, Frimpong has received many awards including the prestigious Samuel Huntington Public Service Award, Forbes 30 under 30 list of top social entrepreneurs around the world, the Clinton Foundation’s CGIU Honor Roll, and the Muhammad Ali Award, which recognizes six global activists who work towards social change under age thirty. HRM Queen Elizabeth II has also awarded him the Queen’s Young Leader Award at the Buckingham Palace.
Frimpong holds master’s degrees from Penn (MS, Non-Profit Leadership) and Yale (Advanced MPH, Global Health). He graduated from both schools with top academic prizes. Currently, he is pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Beyond his peer-reviewed publications, he has also provided expertise on community engagement in public health and medicine by working with UNICEF and WHO to co-author evidence-based frameworks on global health issues.