Hilina D. Ajakaiye

Executive Vice President, Meet Boston

Hilina D. Ajakaiye is the Executive Vice President at Meet Boston, bringing nearly 20 years of sales, marketing, and operations expertise to her role at the organization. She leads many important initiatives related to community engagement, workforce development, accessibility, and a wide range of mission-critical work in the equity, diversity, and inclusion space.

At Meet Boston, she spearheads a partnership with Tourism Diversity Matters (TDM) that aims to diversify the travel and hospitality workforce, particularly in the upper management and leadership tiers. She also currently serves as co-chair of the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Committee for Destinations International.

For Ajakaiye, partnership is the foundation of success. She is leading an overhaul of Meet Boston’s traditional membership structure to replace it with a partnership paradigm. In her endeavor to drive greater value proposition, Ajakaiye has developed a 501 (c)(3) private foundation that will allow the organization to pursue charitable work and community partnership like never before.

Ajakaiye is the Founder of the R.I.S.E. Women’s Leadership Conference, for which she was named “Rhode Islander of the Year” in 2019 by Rhode Island Monthly. She is an inductee into the Big Brothers, Big Sisters “People We Admire” program and is a graduate of The Partnership, Inc.’s Leadership Program. Along with her husband and two children, she is an avid traveler who embraces the notion that travel breaks down barriers, allows for cultures in contact to flourish, and cultivates global citizens.