Empowerment: Why Rosemary doesn’t look far

Dar es Salaam. Female empowerment starts small: starting within yourself, and bolstered by powerful women around you, like mentors. Sometimes, to move from one step to the next doesn’t need support from other people - because, if you don’t have the mind-set of moving on, it won’t be easy for others to give the support you need because you’re not ready to show what you’re capable of.

In celebrating Season-2 of Mwananchi Communication Limited’s Rising Woman Initiative, Rosemary Nkya encourages women to have the mind-set that “It starts with us” to be where they want to be.

Rosemary is the operations manager at the Jubilee Life Insurance Corporation of Tanzania Limited. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Actuarial Science from Cape Town University.

At an early stage, she develops the ability of caring and giving advice to her siblings that encourage her to build the version that helps her in career life which requires to be responsible, accountable, oversee a team and make tough decisions that comes with one being a leader.

Born and raised in a Christian family, Rosemary always grounded into good behaviours, morals and integrity which are the core values in life and these have contributed largely into her success wherever she goes.

During adulthood up to her career, the attitude of discipline and self-determination have always followed her since then, because sometimes in life, we do need the right people to coach us about the overall attitudes.

Each individual has a different leadership style that guides them in their daily life activities, according to Rosemary, she narrates that her leadership style is built on the foundations of her upbringing, all these comes from the point where she was responsible and advisors to her siblings and friends.

“The aspects of having had to be responsible, caring, being an advisor and even having to challenge my siblings and friends when I needed to do so,” said Rosemary.

Adding, as she grew up, she learnt the aspects of trusting people, that’s her leadership, it involves trusting those who are in the team, what is so unique about her, she doesn’t micro manage her team, rather than she has the open door policy.

“I have an open-door policy and give freedom to my team to freely come and be open to talk to me in that way, the team feel they are valued and respected and because I show them trust, they strive to take ownership not to break that trust and be able to meet what is expected of them,” said Rosemary.

In the matter of why many companies still do not prioritise developing and retaining great women leaders, Rosemary explains that she doesn’t think there is a shortage of women with skills that led to those companies not being able to prioritise and retain great women, she always knows in the next few years the story will be different.

“As of late we have even started to see some women emerging in Board of Directors places where it was all male dominated arena of which with all the awareness and awakening of female leaders, I believe in the next five years the number of women leaders sitting in Boards of Directors would significantly increase,” said Rosemary.

We are still in the debate on how women can be empowered in leadership roles, apart from that, Rosemary narrates that, to all women who are reading this article, they must know that for women to be leaders they must start with us.

“Women we need to have that hunger and determination to get onto leadership go for it, without letting anyone do for us, we must build confidence for girls and women by raising awareness to them that they are very capable to take up leadership roles and that gone are the days where leadership seemed to be only for men,” said Rosemary.

She also added that, we need to have more campaigns for promoting gender equality in the space of work/organisations, women need to be encouraged to go for higher learning education or several formal training.

“Women need to have those short courses for them to be acquiring new skills and knowledge to make them grow in their career and into leadership roles,” said Rosemary.

According to Rosemary, Lack of appropriate and adequate skills in women in those particular companies, is one of the things that causes lack of diversity in top leadership that led to women not rising to the top.

“Women, we need to face our fear and go for it, because we need to have the will and self determination to get onto a leadership position,” said Rosemary.

Mind-set of people needs to be changed and they need to see that women are capable in every situation that has been done by male, now days women participate in different matters and play different roles that leave marks in the worlds.

For Rosemary, she believes that women need to believe in themselves, they should always know that, they need to keep working hard and giving their best in whichever roles they are in. Women need to use it if belonging to different forums where women come together.

“Women need to spur one another into greater heights as different women share their success stories, women should strive to seek for knowledge and skills and build on mentorship programs where we will have people who would hold us accountable, challenge us and call us higher into our potentials,” said Rosemary.

In explain about the self-care and how she accomplishes all the task as a leader, Rosemary narrates that, self-care is about caring for self, loving self and making sure that consciously looking after her wellbeing from eating well, exercising and resting

“As a leader, it’s not always easy to have this balance but I try to be consciously aware of where I am at in terms of what area am I lacking in different stages of life because life is dynamic and thereafter try to take the necessary steps required to fix the matter at hand,” said Rosemary.

She is always looking back at where she came from, in doing that, she gives out three pieces of advice to younger women who dream of becoming leaders in different corporate.

The number one thing to consider is having a vision of where they want to be in terms of their career - and their purpose of life in general.

“You need to plan steps that would help them to achieve their vision, execute the plans - and be consistent and disciplined,” said Rosemary.