Evelyn is redesigning what’s possible for women leaders

Mugisha’s determination led her to become one of the few female architects in that country, and it has never left her.

"As a young African girl, I did not have the same opportunities as the boys, but I had the resolve to change that narrative," she says.

Mugisha graduated last year with a Diploma of Governance from Community Directors, with the support of a CALD2LEAD scholarship, which, as the name suggests, supports women from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds.

The study complements her work in supporting emerging women leaders, and “sharpened my thinking about governance in community organisations”.

“Governance is about enabling good decisions [and] shouldn't slow organisations down."

Her study has also influenced her work on the board of Girls4Girls, or G4G, a not-for-profit mentoring network founded in the US that operates in several countries, and which helped shape her own career.

Her involvement in the G4G board comes off the back of her own experience of its mentoring program. She had already worked in diverse roles: in architecture; in management roles at Uganda’s main electricity distributor; and at a social enterprise she founded to help women-led households to earn income.

At the time she was weighing a move to Australia, yet initially the old thinking patterns held sway. "I came to G4G thinking that in a few months, I was going to throw away my dreams, relocate to Australia to become a housewife," she says.

That changed when the G4G mentors assisted her to develop skills in advocating and negotiating.

"The mentors … gave me permission to think bigger," she says.

Rather than cutting ties with her work in Uganda, she negotiated to keep supporting an energy-access pilot scheme – which helped start ups access off-grid power, and to keep working on a construction project that she was managing remotely.

"I started to see my moving to Australia more as an opportunity than a setback. I started to realise that I was not limited by location."

Nowadays, she’s a manager at Development Victoria, where she helps govern complex housing, precinct and civic projects across Melbourne. She’s also undertaking a doctorate in governance and delivery models for complex precinct development with a focus on a “governance capability diagnostic” that assesses whether governance arrangements match the complexity of the projects they govern.

Mugisha carries a lot of responsibility now, and she’s come a long way from her younger self, who was "too shy to speak up" and "quick to give up”.

Her maturing understanding of leadership is the reason why she now seeks to create leadership openings for other women.

“Growing up in rural Uganda, I learnt that leadership starts with taking responsibility when circumstances don't favour you."

Mugisha still sees access, more than capability, as the real barrier facing women and CALD leaders. "Many CALD women have exceptional qualifications and experience but lack the networks, sponsors and visibility that open leadership opportunities," she says.

This is one of the reasons why she's been looking at ways to bring G4G's mentoring materials into a program for Melbourne secondary school students.

"Personally, I hope that 20 years from now, the women I've mentored will have gone further than I ever did.”

Meet more Community Directors graduates