Mariyah
Acka'a
Author of Who Told You That? Crafting the Life You Love. She wrote the book from inside the work — not from the comfortable distance of having arrived.
Mariyah D. Acka'a is the author of Who Told You That? Crafting the Life You Love and the founder of the Choose Forward platform. She has Nigerian and European heritage, was raised in New York, and is based in the United Kingdom. She holds an MBA and is a Senior Manager at a global technology company.
She is also Managing Director of Viewpoint Nigeria Ltd — her late father's company — and founder of the Acka'a-Hitchman Foundation, a charitable organisation based in Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria, dedicated to economic empowerment and environmental restoration.
Why she wrote this book
Mariyah wrote Who Told You That? after a deeply personal period of grief and reinvention that forced her to confront the hidden frameworks shaping her own life. What she found was a set of beliefs — about worthiness, about what was possible for someone with her background and history, about what she was allowed to want — that had been running silently for years.
Through that process she began developing the Choose Forward method: a way of identifying the beliefs that hold us back, understanding where they came from, and consciously choosing which ones still serve us.
Writing from multiple worlds
Mariyah grew up navigating more than one cultural world simultaneously — Nigerian, European, Jamaican heritage, formed in New York, rooted in London. She is a mother of two sons. She understands from personal experience what it means to carry an Inherited Script across cultural and generational lines, and to spend years living a version of your life designed by others rather than chosen by you.
This is why the book speaks across backgrounds. The research is international. The stories are specific enough to land and universal enough that you recognise yourself in them.
Founded in honour of family legacy. Based in Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria (CAC RC 9354455). Focused on economic empowerment, environmental restoration, and community development. A portion of proceeds from the Who Told You That? ecosystem supports the Foundation's work. Learn more →
The book, the platform, the games
Who Told You That? Crafting the Life You Love is published under the House of V imprint by House of V Heritage Holdings Ltd (Company No. 17030397, England and Wales). The companion platform — chooseforward.life — includes 20 interactive games, a free Freedom Assessment, and a suite of tools built around the book's framework.
Start with the book or the assessment
The Freedom Assessment is free and takes five minutes. The book is available as a digital download or hardcover on Amazon.
Take the Free Assessment Get the Book