Meseret (Mesi) Haileyesus is a social entrepreneur, multi-award-winning economic security and Justice futurist, and the first Canadian to bring economic abuse into public policy discourse and call for national and international economic abuse policy responses in the Canadian Parliament. She is the Founder and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Women’s Empowerment (CCFWE), co-founder of the International Coalition Against Economic Abuse, and founder of multiple national and global initiatives advancing financial inclusion and systemic reform.
Her leadership has been recognized nationally and internationally with more than 25 awards, including the 2025 Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case, the 2023 CWE Entrepreneur Award by Google Canada, recognition among Canada’s Top 25 Women of Influence, Forty Under 40, and features in Forbes.
For more than 24 years, her work has examined how health care, economic, employment, and technological systems shape risk, resilience, and long-term outcomes, particularly for women and equity-deserving communities. She has worked extensively with governments, financial institutions, fintech companies, consumer lawyers, and multilateral bodies, contributing to strategic frameworks and policy dialogue addressing systemic barriers faced by women experiencing financial abuse. She is widely known for translating complex structural challenges into clear, decision-ready insights for leaders navigating system change.
Meseret has been repeatedly invited to testify before the Canadian Parliament, the Senate, the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women, and the Ontario Legislative Assembly. Her advocacy has contributed to legislative dialogue surrounding Bill 41: Protection from Coerced Debts Incurred through Human Trafficking Act (2023) and Canadian Senate Bill S-206 on Guaranteed Livable Basic Income. She has also contributed to federal pre-budget consultations on access to banking and financial protection.
A defining achievement of her leadership is more than a decade of sustained policy influence contributing to Federal Budget 2025. She was invited by the Minister of Finance to deliver keynote remarks in Parliament regarding the development of Canada’s first national Code of Conduct for financial institutions addressing economic abuse. She currently serves on several national policy and advisory boards.
Her systems-change leadership has informed federal budgets, legislative reforms, and national measures advancing women’s economic security, financial inclusion, homelessness prevention, and equitable access to capital. In 2019, Meseret initiated Canada’s National Economic Abuse Awareness Day on November 26. The initiative has since expanded internationally, influencing awareness efforts in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, and strengthening education for financial institutions, policymakers, and survivors of coerced debt and financial abuse.
She has presented her work to the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, provincial legislatures, the House of Commons, and the Senate.