PRESS RELEASE | DREAM BIGGER. GO BEYOND. RETURN TO YOURSELF.
DREAM BIGGER. GO BEYOND. RETURN TO YOURSELF.
KDPM Equity Institute Reveals the Cover and the 13 WAFA Trust Principles of Women as Future Ancestors — Purple Paper Series, Volume I
Marking International Women's Day, 10 Years of KDPM Equity Institute & 15+ Years of SisterTalk Research
TORONTO, ONTARIO — On International Women's Day 2026, KDPM Equity Institute — the Toronto-based cultural intelligence and equity organization founded by Cultural Architect Karlyn Percil-Mercieca — makes a landmark dual announcement: the cover reveal and the public unveiling of the 13 WAFA Trust Principles — the living framework at the heart of Women as Future Ancestors: Beyond the Betrayal Box and the Myth of Women's Empowerment, Purple Paper Series, Volume I.
This moment is a historic convergence — the 10th anniversary of KDPM Equity Institute, more than 15 years of SisterTalk Group Collective practice-based research, and International Women's Day 2026. Today, KDPM does not simply mark milestones. It returns with the gifts.
The Purple Paper Series & the Sankofa Celebration Return
The Purple Paper Series is KDPM's flagship publication line — a body of work that refuses to separate research from lived wisdom, ancestral knowledge from institutional learning, or community from scholarship. Volume I launches today as the opening chapter of the KDPM Sankofa Celebration Return: a ten-chapter series honouring ten years of impact, ten stories of transformation, and the movement that made it all possible.
The Sankofa Celebration Return is named deliberately. In Akan wisdom, Sankofa teaches: go back and retrieve what was left behind so you may move forward. For KDPM, this is not nostalgia — it is a sacred reckoning and a sacred return. It is the act of coming back to the community, the research, the circles, and the scholars who made the work whole, and saying: we see what was built. We honour where it came from. We carry it forward.
Chapter 1 of the Purple Paper Series launches on March 30, 2026 — the official KDPM 10th Anniversary.
Today's Reveal: The Cover & The 13 WAFA Trust Principles
Today's announcement goes beyond a cover reveal. For the first time publicly, KDPM unveils the 13 WAFA Trust Principles — the framework born from over 15 years of SisterTalk Group Collective circles, from thousands of women sharing their truths across cultures, industries, and continents. These principles are not theoretical constructs. They are the distilled fruit of what women said, felt, survived, and dreamed in circle — returned now as a framework for future generations.
Grounded in Adinkra/Akan wisdom, Dagara elemental cosmology, Yoruba spiritual traditions, and Caribbean folkloric intelligence, the 13 WAFA Trust Principles center Integrated Intelligence
Landmark SisterTalk research — including the 2016 finding that 37% of women name self-betrayal as their deepest wound — forms the empirical backbone of these principles. The 13 WAFA Trust Principles move women beyond the Betrayal Box — the invisible architecture of self-silencing, systemic betrayal, and cultural abandonment — and into their full power as architects of the future. Women are not simply empowered. They are ancestors in motion.
In Her Own Words
“We are celebrating more than a decade — we are returning with what we have gathered. The gifts we gained from having the privilege of learning, healing, growing, and dreaming bigger together.
I call this the Sankofa Celebration Return because it is a sacred return. We are bringing back the research, the wisdom from the circles, the lived truths from thousands of women who trusted us with their stories. And we are also returning what we learned from Black and Indigenous scholars — the thinkers, the ancestors, the knowledge keepers who gave us the intellectual and spiritual foundation to build something true.
The 13 WAFA Trust Principles are not mine. They belong to every woman who sat in a SisterTalk circle and trusted that her truth mattered. Today, we give it back.”
— Karlyn Percil-Mercieca, Founder & CEO, KDPM Equity Institute | Cultural Architect
Dream Bigger. Go Beyond. — The KDPM Sankofa Return 10-Year Theme
Dream Bigger. Go Beyond. is the guiding theme of KDPM's Sankofa Return — the 10-year celebration anchoring everything KDPM launches in 2026. It is both an invitation and a declaration of what becomes possible when women are no longer asked to fit inside systems that were never designed to hold them. It calls women, organizations, and communities to move past incremental inclusion and into genuine transformation — rooted in trust, cultural wholeness, and the power of women dreaming together.
International Women's Day 2026 is the first ceremonial moment of this return. Today's announcement is KDPM's IWD gift: not a program, not a panel, not a performative gesture — but the unveiling of 15 years of collective wisdom, held in research, returned as principle, and offered freely to the women who need it most. The Sankofa Celebration Return continues through March 30 and beyond — ten chapters, ten stories, one movement.
About the Publication
What Is WAFA?
WAFA stands for Women as Future Ancestors. It is not a program. It is not a workshop. It is not a diversity initiative dressed in ancestral clothing. WAFA is a living framework — 13 principles of trust practice rooted in Caribbean susu wisdom, Lokono and Kalinago ancestral Intelligence, Dagara elemental cosmology, Black feminist scholarship, and the documented lived experiences of thousands of women navigating sisterhood as both wound AND healing.
We launch the 13 WAFA Principles on International Women's Day, March 8, 2026. But the seeds were planted long before any of us were born. They lived in our mothers' and grandmothers', our friendships, kinships, collective trauma and collective ingenuity and cultural leadership.
Title: Women as Future Ancestors: Beyond the Betrayal Box and the Myth of Women's Empowerment
Series: Purple Paper Series, Volume I
Celebration Series: KDPM Sankofa Celebration Return — 10 Chapters | 10 Stories | 10 Years
IWD Dual Reveal: Cover + 13 WAFA Trust Principles — March 8, 2026
Chapter 1 Launch: March 30, 2026 — KDPM 10th Anniversary
Research Foundation: 15+ years of SisterTalk Group Collective practice-based research on women's trust, sisterhood, and self-betrayal
Framework: The 13 WAFA Trust Principles — rooted in Adinkra/Akan wisdom, Black and Indigenous scholarship, and Integrated Intelligence
About KDPM Equity Institute
KDPM Equity Institute is a Toronto-based cultural intelligence and human equity organization founded by Karlyn Percil-Mercieca — Cultural Architect, international speaker, and PhD candidate at McMaster University (Communication, New Media & Cultural Studies). With 23+ years of experience spanning international banking, corporate equity, and community-based research across three continents, KDPM operates at the intersection of ancestral wisdom, neuroscience, and systemic transformation.
KDPM's four cultural houses include the SisterTalk Group Collective (15+ years of practice-based research), KOFA AI (a culturally intelligent coaching platform), The Success System, and the KDPM Equity Institute. Organizational partners include TD Bank, KPMG, and Pinterest. KDPM's work is grounded in the foundational belief: Culture as Compass. Trust as Daily Practice. Community as Power.
MEDIA CONTACT
KDPM Equity Institute
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
info@karlynpercil.com
www.kdpmequityinstitute.com
Culture as Compass. Trust as Daily Practice. Community as Power.
