Nairobi’s late-morning light spilled across the Ford Foundation hallway as a warm, precise voice began: “Good morning, good afternoon, good evening from wherever you’re listening to us.” The host was Jacqueline Asiimwe, lawyer, activist, and CEO within the CivSource Africa Galaxy, recording a special prelude to the Leaders’ Gala & Ball (2 October). Her guest: Margaret Mliwa, Regional Director, Ford Foundation, East Africa, unable to attend in person, intent that her voice would “be in the room.”
Before policy came something closer. “Tell us something we wouldn’t know,” Jacqueline said. Margaret smiled: “My name means fighter. I fight my battles, people don’t expect it because I smile a lot.” Then a quick stab of nostalgia: “I love cassava, boiled, fried, roasted. In Uganda, I buy roast and carry it back for breakfast.” Leadership, like culture, begins near the ground.
When did leadership first recognize her? Primary school: head girl. Secondary school: head girl again. New A-Level school: head girl again. Eighth of twelve children, with two nephews her age, she wondered what others kept seeing. Her instinct was to serve from the background, “My strength is in the kitchen,” where real work is prepared, yet life kept escorting her to the front of the house. “People must be seeing something,” she decided. “So I began to embrace it.”
What holds her steady? Three anchors:
Empathy. Leadership is service, and service is relational. “You’re not serving in isolation.” As Regional Director she returns to simple questions: Why are we here? What are we doing? What is our core mandate? Only then: What is our shared vision?
Compassion. Teams carry go-getters and quiet temperaments; peaks and valleys; strengths and limits. “We have to think about our humanness with compassion,” she says, for others and ourselves.
Generosity. Grace as daily practice. People arrive like weather, sunlit one morning, overcast the next. “Extend grace in the valley, on the mountaintop, even when they’re irritated. Allow everyone to be who they are.”
At Ford Foundation, leadership is a throughline. “We fund institutions, ideas, and individuals.” Strong institutions require vision and systems that endure “long after the leader has left.” For individuals, Ford looks for “pockets of change”, people moving the world in their contexts, sometimes quietly, always persistently.
The work is urgent and uneven, closing civic space; gender, disability, climate, and economic justice. “You take ten steps forward, then ten steps back.” The map shifts; the answer is to keep refilling people, building cohorts to compare notes, share courage, and trade practical wisdom.
On the Experience Retreat (hosted by CivSource Africa and CivLegacy), Margaret is clear: “Life-changing.” She arrived low, wondering if she should quit. The space lifted, scent, softness, intentional design. Facilitation invited candor; the language of chakras helped her name what had dimmed; a fire ceremony helped her lay it down. “Whatever I burned in that fire, I burned. I came back fresh to self. Confidence returned.” Most of all, cohort: “You realize you’re not the only one.”
As CivSource Africa turns eight on 1 October, and the Gala launches the Leaders’ Oasis, a purpose-built retreat space, Margaret offers counsel: embed indigenous and communal grammars of leadership into contemporary practice. Think enterprise leadership, more horizontal than vertical. “More of others and less of us. Leadership is building, mentoring, coaching, holding hands, crying with people, laughing with your people. When you fail, we have failed. When you manage, we have won.”
She will miss being in the room, but her voice will travel with the program. In a city of urgency and poise, the conversation returns to first things, grace, shared vision, collective strength, and the quiet confidence of a leader often pulled from kitchen to front of house, not for spotlight, but to feed a room.
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