R.I.S.E. as a Blueprint – Hilina Ajakaiye on Designing Platforms of Power for Women of Color

Hilina D. Ajakaiye didn’t build R.I.S.E. to check boxes. She built it to fill a void, one she understood intimately. After two decades of operating inside corporate systems and civic institutions, she saw the same pattern repeat itself: women of color were invited into rooms, but rarely into power. So she stopped waiting for better systems and started designing them.

R.I.S.E., short for Realizing Inspiration and Sustaining Excellence, started as a conference. It has since become a leadership platform, mentorship pipeline, and a model for how to center equity in both design and delivery. At its core, R.I.S.E. is a refusal: a refusal to let women of color be reduced to their resilience, and a demand that they be recognized as architects, strategists, and legacy-builders in their own right. - R.I.S.E

Hilina doesn’t position empowerment as a moment, it’s a structure. That structure is built on four pillars: community, credibility, continuity, and care. These aren’t abstract ideals. They are operational tools that show up in how she develops curriculum, selects partners, and frames the long game. R.I.S.E. is not about individual success stories. It’s about collective capacity.

Over the past eight years, the platform has reached over 10,000+ women and girls in person, with digital reach over 140,000+. It has provided scholarships, mentorship, and training, but more critically, it has redefined what leadership spaces look and feel like. No more shrinking. No more code-switching. No more making yourself palatable to fit into a model never meant for you.

“Does this serve equity, dignity, and legacy?” That is the question Hilina asks before every decision, whether it’s a speaker invitation, a new initiative, or a partnership proposal. That filter keeps the work honest, but also sharply strategic. Nothing is done for optics. The outcomes are measured in lives moved forward, in institutions reconsidered, and in the invisible infrastructure that helps women build not just careers, but futures.

One of the reasons R.I.S.E. works is that it doesn’t exist in isolation. It sits at the intersection of several sectors Hilina knows well: corporate strategy, workforce development, tourism economics, and civic leadership. Her ability to cross-pollinate these spaces allows her to do something most “empowerment” platforms don’t: move capital, influence policy, and create momentum.

This isn’t philanthropy-as-branding. It’s philanthropy-as-infrastructure. The foundation isn’t just about women’s leadership, it’s about women leading how leadership itself is defined.

Hilina’s lived experience as a first-generation immigrant informs her lens, but it doesn’t confine her work. R.I.S.E. may have started in Rhode Island, but its framework is scalable, and she’s proving that equity-centered design can be rigorous, replicable, and revenue-conscious. There’s nothing soft about this approach. It’s a strategy with soul.

The strength of R.I.S.E. is not in its scope, but in its clarity. It understands what too many institutions still miss: that women of color don’t need to be “empowered”; they need to be trusted with resources, influence, and space to define their own terms. And they need systems that support them, not just when they’re succeeding, but when they’re still figuring it out.

Hilina is building those systems. Quietly, intentionally, and with a sharp eye on legacy, not as a personal brand, but as a public responsibility.

“Leadership, for me, is about creating the conditions for others to move without friction,” she’s said. “I don’t want the next generation to have to negotiate for belonging the way we had to.”

That’s not a soundbite. That’s a design brief. And R.I.S.E. is living proof of what it looks like when women of color are not only included in leadership, but centered in its redefinition.