KeyNote: Celebrating Women of Influence

KeyNote: Celebrating Women of Influence

On Friday September 12, 2025, I was given the honor of giving the keynote at the graduation event for FITSPA Women’s Mentorship program in collaboration with INOZA Africa. The mentorship program lasted 6 weeks, had 19 participants 17 ladies and 2 gentlemen, of whom 16 graduated by completing all required attendance.

The program is based on John Maxwell’s Leadership principles.

The program was run under the FITSPA Women’s committee, 11 females and 1 male.

In this post I will share a summary of the ideas from the keynote. The basis was the 3 principles of John Maxwell’s leadership approach:

• Character
• Competence
• Connection

Character

As an African woman, you are already a sister, mother, aunt, friend, spouse (I like to switch it around to spice) to those around you. As Myles Munroe said, “Whatever you give a woman, she is going to multiply. If you give her a house she creates a home”, thus you are already well suited for greatness.

Looking at my Buganda tribal heritage, there are many areas where women are granted power:

• Namasole - the Queen mother, is the only person to whom greviances against the Kabaka, the most powerful man in the kingdom both culturally and administratively can be addressed
• Ssenga - a title for a man’s sisters, they can make decisions for her brother’s children, and he has to listen to her. Even in the traditional marriage process, she is the gatekeeper of the process

Therefore:

1. If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far, go together
2. Educate a woman, you educate a nation. Empower a woman, and you empower a generation
3. The key areas you need to work on:
   • Co-opetition: you can cooperate and compete with your fellow woman, we men do it all the time
   • Provide a support system for your fellow women, grow stronger together
   • Set each other’s crowns for the queens you are
4. The Ganda proverb, “Agalya awamu ge galuma enyama” - the teeth that bite together, eat the meat, is a reminder that all great things are done with others, better together

Competence

My driver for competence is from Paul Graham’s essay How to do great work, and its coverage on the Founder’s Podcast episode by David Senra - https://pod.link/founders/episode/MzExNDRjMjEtNmRkMC00ZDRmLTliZGUtMmY5NDBiMjllYmZj , gives a few pointers on how to approach building competence

1. Spend an unreasonable amount of time on a problem, which means you need to build mastery of skills over time which is about 5 years:
   • Malcolm Gladwell - 10,000 hours to mastery
   • Naval - 10,000 iterations to mastery
2. Compounding - the 8th wonder of the world, which is a big play on time and the long game, investing now for future gains
3. Consistency is the key to making progress:
   • Get something done every day, as dictated by James Clear in Atomic Habits, whether exercise/dieting/working on improving your skills
   • Learn something new everyday - Dr. Charles Mukasa my first mentor, the little titbits and nuggets of knowledge may be helpful
   • Kaizen: Continous improvements however small compound giving large outcomes and outputs after a while. Improving 1% everyday gives 37 times better at the end of the year
4. Time is your friend, use it to build value over time, small steps & actions, add up. Time allows one to build experience, get changes in perspective and be able to predict changes in the world
5. Do things that others are not interested in doing, but not for ever. My experience on this was learning how to take meeting minutes - allows you to get into closed doors as you ask for confirmation from superiors in a meeting on action items, items of discussion. Try to do this in person where possible and over time, you will be invited into rooms to due to your competence
6. The best way to learn something is to teach it, thus a mantra taught to me by Dr. Charles Mukasa, is work yourself out of a job. So as soon as I land a new role, after the first week, I am looking for my replacement meaning I need to build skills of those around me to take over whatever I am doing, as I am learning it

Connection

Proverbs 22:19 - If you do good work you will stand in the presence of Kings.

When you do good work, people will notice you ~ Ram Kapoor

All of these point to competency opening doors for you and making connections for you wherever you pass.

Be the rising tide that raises all ships - be the one who uplifts others, and you will have better quality people around you supporting you

Say yes first ~ Richard Branson, when opportunity is given to you, grab it with both hands and then figure out how to get it done. As you mature, then you can be more selective in what you say Yes to.

I was honored to share the stage with Anne Marie Mwaka Sabano of aBi Finance and Christine Musisi of Inoza, and like we say Gakyali Mabaga - it is only the beginning