After years spent directing communications in government and then in the insurance industry, Aderonke Bademosi Wilson was unsure what she wanted to do next.

“In 2022, I packed up my camera and travelled throughout south-east Asia for three months,” she said. “I wasn’t quite sure when I was coming back; I just knew I needed time to think about my next steps.”

On a mountaintop in Indonesia she found answers.

“I realised the best time in my career was when I was consulting,” she said.

Between 2006 and 2015, she and her brother, Oluremi Bademosi, ran consulting firm the Stratford Group.

In Indonesia, she also decided she wanted to pursue her passion for photography more.

“I knew what I had to do,” she said.

She cut her trip short and returned to Bermuda to begin setting up ABWilson Consulting and ABWilson Photography. She celebrates her first anniversary in business this month.

Corporations typically come to ABWilson Consulting looking for help implementing sustainable change around training, management or communications.

Sometimes consultants come into a business to sort out everything that is wrong in an organisation and name who is to blame. This is not Ms Bademosi Wilson’s way. She uses a technique called “appreciative inquiry”, which focuses on building on strengths rather than fixing problems.

“It emphasises what is working well and leverages strengths and successes to drive innovation, productivity and transformation,” she explained.

She does not always tell her clients that she uses this method. It is not a secret; she just does not think it is always necessary.

“I don’t have to tell them,” she said. “That’s the beauty of it. Once you know and understand it, you can start using it.”

Typical questions to clients might be: “How do you go through change, or how do we make these changes in a way that includes everyone?” Another question might be: “What is the best thing in this organisation and how do we replicate it?”

She calls herself a “solutions partner”.

In the last year, her biggest lesson has been to seek assistance.

“I have learnt that if I don’t know something, ask for help,” she said. “There are always people who are willing to share their knowledge.”

Ms Bademosi Wilson said sometimes you just have to buy someone’s service.

“I have two websites and although I can edit them, I could not have created them by myself,” she said. “I went to a professional and had them do it.”

She first learnt about appreciative inquiry while working on a project with a client at the Stratford Group. The project’s sponsor interviewed her using the technique.

“That was thrilling for me and I wanted to learn more,” she said.

Over the next few years she attended appreciative inquiry conferences in Nepal and Belgium. She also took courses and connected with two others in Bermuda who used the technique, Gordon Johnson and Duranda Green. Together they held numerous community workshops to raise interest.

When she started ABWilson Consulting she was well aware that it had been years since she worked in the arena.

“I did not understand what the business climate looked like so I took classes and talked to people,” she said.

In the meantime she is also working on her photography through ABWilson Photography. As part of that business, she published a calendar that has her abstract photography and a theme associated with each month. From there she created “3C Gatherings”, online workshops based on her calendar’s monthly theme.

“The three Cs are conversation, connection and community,” she said. “I’ve found subject matter professionals from different parts of the world, who will join me each month to discuss that month’s theme online.”

These 90-minute meetings take place the first Thursday of every month. The theme for the next one, on February 1 at 7.30pm, will be “being in appreciation”.

“I will have two amazing women who look at and appreciate the wisdom of women,” she said. “They want women to appreciate their monthly cycles and see how energy ebbs and flows with it.”

To go with the 3C Gatherings, she also writes a blog post that is available three days before the meeting.

The theme for March will be strength.

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