Meet Mbapila with vast job experience in legal matters

When applying for a job, there is an experience requirement for each job. Advocate Doxa Mbapila, a partner at Endoxa Law in the Corporate Practice, made sure she had enough experience before she engaged herself for a full-time private law practice in 2021. She also heads the finance services sector group and the technology, media, and telecommunications sector group.

She worked in the banking industry, heading the legal and company secretariat departments of Stanbic, EcoBank, Citibank, and NBC. Advocate Doxa Mbapila worked in the banking sector for 15 years.

She says at Endoxa, they are currently focusing on building dynamic teams for the different practice areas with the right mixture of technical skills, personalities, and work ethics.

Mbapila says her return to private practice is a rewarding experience, as Endoxa has advised on a number of local and cross border debt and equity financing mandates for companies in different sectors.

“We have also worked with a number of tech companies entering the Tanzanian market. A number of Tanzanian tech start-ups are also receiving probono services from our firm. Personally, I absolutely love the diversity of the work.”

Soon after her training as a lawyer in the United Kingdom in 2006, her expectation was to follow a career path that would support her becoming a partner in a law firm.

She then joined a top local law firm, IMMMA Advocates-DLA Piper, where she advised on several transactions for Stanbic Bank Tanzania, and due to her hard work, the bank’s Managing Director asked her to head the bank’s legal team.

“I seized the opportunity and learned everything about how banks operate. This was not only to give the right legal advice but also a way of serving the bank’s business interests too,” she says.

Three years later, Ecobank was preparing to enter the Tanzanian market in 2009. She got an opportunity to be recruited to help the bank become established in its new market.

The experienced advocate shares that being able to build up a financial institution from the ground up in the country was too good to pass up, and she deepened her expertise in bank infrastructure and governance and established a strong reputation. In 2013, her reputation led Citibank East Africa to recruit her to head its legal team in Tanzania. In 2016, NBC recruited her.

When asked what is always holding women back from excelling in their careers, she says many women are qualified but lack confidence. Her experience with different tasks taught her that a lot of mentorship and support are needed for women to excel.

She says at the beginning of her career in the 2000s, few doors were open for women, and even if they were, structures to support women’s advancement were not made, something that forced her to look for mentors and blend leadership training with on job training programmes.

“Through being coached, I learned about gender differences in confidence and communication that hold women back. As we speak, more doors are opening for women, but they still don’t know how to walk through them. I continue to mentor a number of young female lawyers from other firms who hopefully can learn from my experiences and also do better than me in maintaining a work-life balance,” Mbapile says.

Commenting on the challenges that might be holding women back in the legal field, she says, illegal behaviors at the workplace put women in a tight position, and some women tend to hide where they feel safe without addressing such challenges.

“The ability to challenge”: “When I joined the sector, it was a man’s club, so my task was to open doors for myself and then stay the course. Once I was inside, I had to prove myself,” she says.

When asked about her leadership style, she says that giving others the opportunity to shine is important to her because she believes in personal development.She encourages her team to pursue opportunities and learn.

Mbapila says exposure gives people the ability to challenge without fear and makes them capable of making far-reaching changes. “Women should trust that they can speak up without the risk of retaliation, and speaking up can protect you,” she says.

Commenting on sexual harassment at work, she says it is a major setback for women. On this, both men and women need to be trained on how to stand up for themselves and fight sexual harassment.

She challenged companies to encourage women to aim higher after seeing how women bring unique capabilities to leadership positions as they are good at multitasking, building relationships, and handling different challenges well. These personalities are enablers for women in leadership roles and bring benefits to the business.

“When women are given opportunities and treated equally, they go the extra mile to deliver. Women should know that choosing to marry and have children should not be at the expense of their ambitions,” she says.

If I could speak back to my younger self, I would have made the move back to private practice much earlier. The firm was actually registered in 2011 because even then, I always knew I wanted to return to private practice, though I listened to people who were discouraging me.

Previously, she had served as Head of the Legal Department and Secretary of the Board of Directors at the National Bank of Commerce (NBC), one of Tanzania’s largest and oldest banks and part of South Africa’s Absa Group.