You already carry the capital. You just haven't been given a tool that sees it.
Cross Posted | KDPM Equity Institute · LinkedIn Newsletter
Introducing the Cultural Susu Assessment™ — a new kind of leadership diagnostic
Most leadership assessments measure what is missing.
They hand you a score, a gap, a competency to develop — as if leadership were a deficit to be corrected rather than an inheritance to be activated. As if the wisdom you carry from your culture, your community, your ancestry, were supplementary to the work of leading — rather than the source of it.
For ten years, SisterTalk Group Collective held circles. And what those circles confirmed, over and over, was this: the leaders who were struggling most were not lacking skill. They were building on borrowed soil. They had been trained to lead from frameworks that were never built for them — and the creative capital they carried was sitting untapped, unnamed, and unmeasured.
The Cultural Susu Assessment™ was built to change that. It does not measure what you lack. It is a witnessing of what you carry.
Rooted in the West African Susu tradition of collective trust and pooled wisdom, and grounded in ten years of SisterTalk community research, neuroscience, and the Beyond EQ Model™, this assessment surfaces the five dimensions of Integrated Intelligence that most leadership tools never touch.
For individuals — what you will discover
Your cultural identity as intellectual capital
Where your ancestral inheritance is already shaping your leadership — and how to lead from it with intention rather than by accident.
Where you are building on borrowed soil
The assessment reveals where you have unconsciously adopted frameworks that were never designed for you — and what becomes possible when you return to your own ground.
Your creative capital profile
A full picture of the cultural, relational, ancestral, and community wealth you bring to every room you enter — and how to name it, invest it, and grow it.
A pathway, not just a score
Your results open a tailored pathway into the Cultural Capital Collective™ — the 18-month leadership ecosystem designed to put what you discover into sustained collective practice.
A contribution to something larger
Every assessment completed builds the first empirical evidence base for the Beyond EQ Model™ — a field built from our communities' own data, not borrowed research.
For organizations — the case for licensing
When your people can name their creative capital, they bring more of it to the work. When your culture is built on cultural authorship rather than cultural adaptation, it holds through complexity, transition, and change. The Cultural Susu Assessment™ is available for organizational licensing — giving your team a shared language and a real baseline.
A shared cultural baseline
Assess your entire team across all five Beyond EQ pillars — individual and collective — and understand the creative capital already present in your organization.
Onboarding that actually orients
License the assessment for new employee onboarding — so every person who joins understands the cultural operating system they are entering, and what they bring to it.
Evidence for your equity commitments
Replace performative metrics with real data. The assessment gives you a measurable, culturally grounded picture of where your organization is — and where it is heading.
A gateway to the Collective
Licensing the assessment is the entry point into KDPM's full ecosystem — including the Cultural Capital Collective™, KOFA AI coaching, and the Wisdom Workshop Pathway.
We are on a campaign to complete 1,000 Cultural Susu Assessments™ with women and social impact organizations.
Every completion builds the evidence base for a leadership model built from our communities, by our communities. Will you be one of the 1,000?
The assessment is free for individuals. Organizational licensing is available through KDPM Equity Institute. Both pathways open the door to the Cultural Capital Collective™ — the leadership ecosystem designed around the wisdom you already carry.
Take the assessment, Explore licensing. or Join the sistertalk group Collective for access.
In collective trust,
Karlyn Percil-Mercieca
Founder & Chief Vision Officer, KDPM Equity Institute
Creator, Cultural Capital Collective™ | Cultural Susu Assessment™
Celebrating 10 years of living this work — 2016 to 2026
