Noelah says challenges help to shape her career journey

Noelah Bomani-Ntukamazina is the Head of Human Capital & Administration at the Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB) leading the Learning & Development Function of the bank.

With 13 years of her experience in her profession, at the TADB she is responsible for leading people, culture and bank wide transformation initiatives. She is also a practicing Transformational Coach and works towards her certification by the International Coaching Federation.

Her Human Resources career started with Stream Global Services in the Netherlands before joining NMB Bank and later Gateway Academy a Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) project housed by the World Bank

She attributes the values she was brought up with as the source of who she is today. The challenges she goes through in different phases of life are part of what shaped her career journey.

“In a normal life span of a human being we all go through different challenges. The most important thing is being able to change challenges into learning points and use them as an advantage to advance ourselves as leaders,” says Noelah.

She says it reached a point in her career journey she wanted to quit when she realised the skills she had were not the only thing to take her to next level. It made her re think on the best way to get up and face all the challenges for her to continue growing.

She adds that the challenges at work place may be those people create themselves without knowing or being created by others just to make you feel unaccepted at work.

She says over the years she came to realise some people at work will never recognise you just because you are a good performer, office politics and complications were there to block her from excelling in her career ladder.

“You speak about faith I prayed, you speak about technical lead I did it, my performance was excellent but there were so many factors as women we tend to miss and think people will just see you just because you are a good performer, kind and nice,” says Noelah.

She says it reaches a time when one starts to question one’s competence and lose confidence. The only way to get out of this situation is to make deliberate efforts to get of the situation or allow yourself to fail and step out.

When asked on how she balances her work/family affair, she says being a mother gives a super power to multitask. She also says she uses her calendar very well as she goes along with it.  However, being a human she also allow some other things to happen within her calendar and get some opportunity to see what she is missing and have a supporting system.

She acknowledges the importance of having mentors  as it has helped her to grow in her career journey. She had about four different mentors who helped her with different things including decision-making, career growth, financial matters, spiritually matters as well as family growth.

She says it is important for one to have mentors as they help one see what the next step of one’s career is and walk  through the processes they went through and guide one by sharing their experiences for one to get solutions.

She says the importance of having a female leader is that she comes with a different touch. Noelah believes in kindness and pointed out that no matter how one is strong if one is not kind, one might not work well.

When asked on what is the most successful achievement she has attained in her career journey, she says being able to see other women grow through her in their career it is something she is humbled about.

She says for her the achievement is not only based on women who excelled to the higher positions but also there are those who became more financial literate and more spiritual and became better mothers through sharing experiences with them. She says there are so many factors stops women from growing despite several efforts in place to push for gender equality.

Apart from having mentors to support one’s career growth, she thinks having a sponsor is something that can support more women in high positions. She says there is a difference between a mentor and sponsor. She says a mentor supports your career growth but a sponsor will be there to push you and guide to your respective roles and give you courage you can reach to your career aspirations.

For her she has two sponsors who pushed her to do more roles that she never wanted to do, believing she had to set boundaries and not add more to her plate for her to get more time with her family.

She applauds the support system and continuous learning as the things which helped her a lot to be where she is today. Making time to enjoy life is another recipe of problems to stop people from growing.

When asked if she would wish to change in her life looking back, she says she would change the over trusting aspect. She was naïve and this made her trust people who do not worth the trust.

“I am very careful these days, I listen careful and take time to think if the talk is genuine. If I realize there are elements of toxic aspects I cut them off. I would rather be alone than having toxic people. I love my peace to joy,” says Noelah.

She advises fellow women to take a hobby and time to enjoy their time out of work.