Choosing to Become: From Resilience to Renaissance
This is a personal reflection on leadership shaped from the inside out — and why lived experience is not a limitation, but an asset.
Video credit: MoonTing Li
Leadership does not begin with a title. It begins with what you decide to build from your experience.
Before you understand a leader, you must understand the child.
More than fifty years ago, I was a little girl in Uganda living through conflict. Soldiers patrolled the streets. Executions were broadcast on television. Schools were closed. There was no water, no electricity, no certainty. At night, my siblings and I would hide in a dark corridor or under the bed when we heard gunfire. We were told to be quiet — not as guidance, but as protection.
In that darkness, I asked myself three questions:
Who knows we are here? Who will hear us? Who will rescue us?
Those questions shaped me more than I realised at the time.
Even then, something quiet was forming. Not strength in the heroic sense. Something steadier. A refusal to accept fear as normal. A belief that life could be better than survival.
In 1976, our family moved to Ghana. For the first time in years, I slept without listening for gunfire. Peace felt unfamiliar, but it also felt possible. I did not yet have the language of leadership, but I carried a vision. I wanted to help shape a world that was safer for children.
That vision guided me from Uganda to Ghana, then to the UK, and eventually to the global stage with the United Nations, working across four continents. I believed in the organisations I served because they spoke directly to the child who once lay awake in the dark, wondering who would hear her. Yet the hardest challenges in my professional life were not operational. They were institutional. Invisible barriers. Closed networks. Expectations of conformity.
As a woman in the diaspora, I often felt the tension of navigating systems that did not always recognise the value of lived experience.
Over time, I came to see that lived experience is not something to minimise. It is an asset. It sharpens judgement. It deepens empathy. It strengthens cultural intelligence. For women in the diaspora especially, our layered identities equip us to lead across difference with insight and credibility.
At 55, I chose early retirement from the United Nations. It was not simply a career decision; it was an identity shift. Walking away from a title and institutional authority was confronting. Without the structure of an organisation behind me, I had to ask: who am I now? In that uncertainty, I found clarity.
That decision became the foundation of my Mindset-to-Output Mentorship programme — leadership shaped from the inside out. After decades working within bureaucratic systems, I realised that sustainable leadership does not begin with position. It begins with internal alignment. Clarity of values. Emotional discipline. The courage to act with discernment.
The theme of EmpowerHer2026, ‘From Resilience to Renaissance’ that took place in Vienna, Austria, resonated deeply with me. I shared that resilience kept me alive. It helped me navigate complexity and endure pressure. But renaissance required something more. It required choice. Resilience is survival. Renaissance is creation. Renaissance is choosing what you become after the storm. It is knowing when to stay and contribute, and when to step away with integrity. It is understanding that leadership is not about endurance alone, but about impact.
Through my mentorship, I have watched young women — and some men — move from hesitation to action. I have seen doubt turn into decision. The transformation is rarely dramatic. It is built through small, deliberate choices made consistently. Leadership shaped from the inside out begins with a single question:
Who are you choosing to become?
As Carl Jung wrote, “I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.” For me, that has meant this:
I am not what happened to me. I am what I chose to build from my lived experience.
That choice remains ours — at every stage of life.
Video credit: MoonTing Li
Margaret Akullo
EmpowerHer 2026, Women Powerhouse Hour
Palais Wenkheim, Webster University
Vienna, Austria
27 February 2026