Today we’d like to introduce you to Yinka Adekeye.
Hi Yinka, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My professional journey spans nearly two decades in healthcare leadership, where I had the privilege of serving in executive roles focused on improving patient experiences and building organizations from the ground up. Over the course of that career, women: colleagues, friends, and even strangers, began confiding in me about struggles with anxiety, burnout, broken confidence, and the pressure of holding everything together, often with nowhere safe to turn.
I realized that many of them had no safe, judgment-free space where they could be vulnerable, process their emotions, and find support.
In 2024, after an intense executive career, I intentionally stepped away for six months to focus on my own mental wellness following a period of severe burnout. That experience became the catalyst for a larger vision: rather than continuing to support women one-on-one, I set out to build a community where women could heal together.
That realization led me to found Elevate Mind & Style in July 2025. The organization’s year-round Elevate Mental Wellness & Empowerment Initiative aims to create spaces for women particularly women of color and women navigating major life transitions such as relocation, divorce, loss to build mental wellness knowledge, reduce social isolation through peer connection, strengthen confidence and resilience, and access community and employment resources.
A subset of our Elevate Mental Wellness & Empowerment Initiative is the Elev8 Expo, our annual community mental wellness summit that brings together women for a day of inspiration, authentic conversations, practical tools, and meaningful connection. We proudly hosted our inaugural Expo in 2025, and we are excited to welcome our community back for Elev8 Expo 2026: Canvas of Confidence on October 31, 2026, in Houston, Texas.
Today, my passion remains the same: to ensure that no woman feels she has to carry life’s burdens alone. Every woman deserves a place where she is seen, heard, supported, and empowered to heal, grow, and shine.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Honestly, no. It hasn’t been a smooth road, and I don’t think any meaningful work ever is.
Funding has probably been the biggest challenge. Starting a nonprofit from the ground up means constantly making the case for why this work matters, often to people who haven’t experienced burnout or mental health struggles themselves, or who see wellness programming as a ‘nice to have’ rather than essential. In the early stages, that meant investing my own personal funds to keep programs running and doors open, because I believed in the mission enough to bet on it myself before anyone else did. That’s not a sustainable long-term model, and it’s part of why community support matters so much to us now whether that’s through donations, sponsorships, or simply showing up to any of our community initiatives. Every bit of outside investment means I’m not the only one carrying this financially, and it means we can reach more women who need this.
The deeper struggle, though, has been convincing women themselves that investing in their own mental wellness is worth it. So many of the women I meet have spent their entire lives pouring into everyone else; their families, their careers, their communities; and the idea of prioritizing their own healing can feel unfamiliar, even indulgent. There’s real guilt attached to it. I’ve had women tell me they feel selfish taking an afternoon for themselves, let alone investing time, money, or energy into their mental health.
Part of our work at Elevate Mind & Style has been reframing that conversation. A woman who is depleted can’t fully show up for the people who depend on her. When she heals, when she has support, when she rediscovers her confidence; that ripples outward. It strengthens her family, her workplace, and her community. Taking care of yourself isn’t the opposite of taking care of others; it’s what makes sustainable care possible. And it’s part of why every Elev8 Expo ticket purchased goes further than just one seat; it helps fund a spot for a woman who couldn’t otherwise be here.
It’s taken personal sacrifice, patience, and a lot of honest conversations to get here. But every bit of it has been worth it.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My work centers on healthcare operations leadership – building and running large-scale patient access and experience functions for major health systems. Today, I serve as Principal Consultant, Strategy and Transformation, where I partner with healthcare organizations to solve their most complex operational challenges.
Most recently, I served as SVP of Patient Access and Experience at a global health company with 26 locations seeing 15 million patients annually. I managed a $40M budget across 12 facilities and led major transformation initiatives, including but not limited to deployment of an enterprise-wide Customer Relationship Management system, consolidating 4 contact centers, and deploying AI-powered service tools to support patients across multiple languages.
Before that, I built the Patient Access Services function from the ground up at a top US hospital in Abu Dhabi – starting before the facility even opened its doors. So what I specialize in, really, is building and transforming things: taking an idea, a struggling process, or an underdeveloped function and turning it into a high-performing operation; whether that’s a contact center serving patients across multiple languages, a health system’s strategic roadmap, or a nonprofit built from a season of personal healing.
What I’m most known for is being someone who doesn’t just manage operations but transforms them. I look at a system, find where it’s breaking down for the people it’s meant to serve, and rebuild it so it works for them.
But if you ask what I’m most proud of, it’s not a budget number or a project. It’s the fact that as a woman of color, I’ve had the opportunity to sit in rooms and hold positions where I could open the door for others; to mentor, sponsor, and actively help other women, and especially other women of color, progress in their careers. Representation in healthcare leadership still isn’t where it needs to be, and every time I’ve been able to use my seat at the table to make room for someone else, that’s meant more to me than any title or metric.
What sets me apart, I think, is that I don’t separate the operational side of my career from the human side of it. Nearly two decades of building and transforming organizations taught me how to lead at scale and that same instinct is what led me to found Elevate Mind & Style, because I saw the same pattern everywhere I went: talented, capable women quietly struggling without anyone asking if they were okay. I bring both the discipline to build something that works, and the heart to build something that heals.”
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
Most people know me as a healthcare executive and founder of Elevate Mind & Style, but what many don’t know is that this organization was born out of one of the most difficult seasons of my own life.
After spending decades in high-pressure executive leadership, I reached a point of burnout that forced me to intentionally step away from my career for six months. For someone who had always been focused on achieving, leading, and solving problems, choosing to slow down and prioritize my own mental wellness was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made.
Ironically, during my career I had become the person so many women trusted with their deepest struggles, yet I realized I had rarely given myself that same permission to pause. That season taught me that strength isn’t about carrying every burden alone – it’s about knowing when to heal.
That experience changed my perspective completely and ultimately led to the creation of Elevate Mind & Style. Today, everything we do is deeply personal to me because I’ve learned firsthand that healing isn’t a luxury – it’s essential. My hope is that every woman who walks into one of our events leaves knowing she doesn’t have to navigate life’s challenges alone.
Pricing:
- Early Bird Pricing for our upcoming Elev8 Expo – General Admission – $80
- Early Bird Pricing for our upcoming Elev8 Expo – VIP – $120
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.elevatemindandstyle.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elevatemindandstyle
- Facebook: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elevate-mind-and-style
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elevate-mind-and-style/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@elevatemindandstyle
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@elevatemindandstyle?_r=1&_t=ZP-97uJGJtyKH0
