Some things you can only learn by leading.
Others, by listening.
Over the years, I've come to know leadership from several vantage points. I've studied political power, helped build and lead organizations, and spent countless hours in conversation with executives responsible for some of the world's most consequential businesses.
EARLY PERSPECTIVES
My childhood unfolded between close-knit Congolese-American communities in Atlanta and Pittsburgh and countries across Africa. Every few years brought a new country, new relationships, and another way of understanding the world. I learned early to pay attention to the people and dynamics that shape how we live and work together. That curiosity eventually took me to the African Union, where I served as a speechwriter for its leaders during the Arab Spring, an extraordinary time to observe power and institutions under pressure.
THE OPERATOR
The private sector offered a different education. I joined an investment fund and spun off a leadership development enterprise with global customers and operations in India, led complex government and investor relationships in Zambia for an Australian firm, and later as COO of a $200 million investment leading through CEO succession and a significant turnaround. I came to understand that the real test of strategy lies in the distance between what leaders believe and what their organizations are able to make real. Closing that distance requires conviction, difficult choices, and confronting hard truths.
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
At World 50, I led two client groups of Fortune 500 divisional presidents and CEOs whose companies represented more than $10 trillion in combined market capitalization. Alongside candid conversations with leaders facing decisions of extraordinary consequence, I worked within their organizations on strategy, executive team effectiveness, and the dynamics that shape execution. It offered a rare vantage point on what leaders carry privately and what their organizations require of them.
WHAT STAYS WITH ME
What stays with me is how often the presenting problem is only part of the story. A strategy that isn't taking hold, a team struggling to make decisions, a leader carrying a question they haven't quite found the words for. Understanding what's happening requires looking beyond the obvious, at the people, relationships, convictions, and assumptions shaping the situation.
Today, as a Principal at The Trium Group, I coach CEOs and senior executives, advise boards and executive teams on strategy and organizational effectiveness, and facilitate offsites. My passion for designing, facilitating, and moderating consequential conversations through conferences, summits, and salons is explored through my conversation design house, Kitoko Solutions.
I live outside Atlanta with my beautifully loud family, while Zambia and Belgium continue to feel like home. Between family farms, a fledgling taxi business, and the people and places that make life interesting, there's rarely a dull moment.
I’d like to think five-year-old me would be endlessly fascinated.