Elsie is an economic governance and financial sector leader with over 30 years of experience and a former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, the second woman to hold the role in the Bank’s 68-year history, and the first on its Monetary Policy Committee. During her seven years as Deputy Governor, she was a member of the Executive Leadership Team, a Board Member, and chair of key executive committees. She oversaw key functions such as financial institutions regulation, supervision, and financial stability, and represented the Bank on several public sector boards and on international groups such as the Basel Consultative Group, the Network for Greening the Financial System, and the Alliance for Financial Inclusion.

She previously worked at the IMF as Senior Counsel (Financial and Fiscal Law) for six years, where she advised member countries on financial regulation, crisis management, public debt governance, public financial management, and fiscal responsibility framework. She conducted Financial Stability Assessments (FSAPs) on G20 countries, provided technical assistance to countries, and supported work on IMF lending arrangements. She also taught and directed courses for IMF member-country officials in Washington, D.C., and in IMF regional training centres in Vienna (Austria), Mauritius, and Singapore.

Before joining the IMF in 2012, Mrs Addo Awadzi was a two-term Commissioner of Ghana’s Securities and Exchange Commission and, in that role, was active in formulating policies and rules to regulate Ghana’s then-nascent capital market. She also consulted extensively on policy and legislative reforms, worked as a corporate transactions lawyer, and worked briefly as a Senior Treasury Dealer in banking.

She holds academic qualifications in law and finance, with an LLM in International Business and Economic Law (with Distinction) from Georgetown University Law Center; an MBA (Finance) degree and an LLB degree from the University of Ghana, and executive education in Public Leadership from Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and Harvard Kennedy School. 

She has been a Visiting Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government since September 2025, where she co-authored a case study on Ghana’s 2022 macroeconomic crisis and IMF negotiations, facilitated workshops for executive leadership programmes, and held talks and guest lectures for students and the school community. She is the Convener of the Women in Economic Governance Initiative and the Principal Consultant at EAA Consulting.