Hands-down one of the most successful women in Uganda’s legal fraternity, Pheona Wall is an award-winning lawyer and human rights advocate who currently serves as president of the Uganda Law Society. She is also a communications professional, a chartered mediator that heads the legal department at National Water and Sewerage Corporation, wife and a mother.
Earlier this year, she was awarded the ‘Peace and Reconciliation’ award in recognition of the remarkable work she has done in the preservation of the rule of law in Uganda. Pheona also won the Hague Institute for Innovation award for Justice in Law and was one of the finalists on New Vision’s Under 40 List.
Pheona shared with GLIM some of her success tidbits in a recent interview. Be inspired!
KNOW YOURSELF
“You need to be very aware of who you are, what your strengths and weaknesses are, values you stand for, and you have to make sure that whatever you do, whatever decisions you make have to be consistent with what you say you are so you need to walk your talk.”
VOLUNTEERISM
“I have been a DJ, I have done so many things and all these things have helped me get life skills like public speaking and I got these skills in the most unexplainable way possible. You would have thought, I could learn public speaking from getting a big job in for example the UN and speaking out there, but no; the UN will not give you a job if you do not know how to speak in public and don’t have a record of having done it. All these things not only build your skillset, but also they make you visible to the people that will one day call you for even bigger responsibilities.”
SELL YOUR VISION
“When you sell the vision to people, then you create followers. You might have a very fancy vision, it may be the best thing for the world, but if no one believes in it, no one will execute it and even if you tried to, whoever comes after you will just do away with it. So, I think it is very important for you to be available to your stakeholders and followers so that they understand what you are selling them.”
EMBRACE CHANGE
“I am not very comfortable with change; it takes me a while. I need to be convinced, but when I am convinced, I will go all the way and I will take all my children and people. My husband says I could sell sand to an Arab but you know it is true I could do that but if I don’t believe that that sand has any worth to it, and then I will not even be able to call it sand.”
MENTORSHIP
“It is very important to be teachable, to allow yourself not to be a full cup and learn because mentorship is what exposes you to good leadership and through mentorship, you learn from the mistakes of your elders. I keep telling people that experience is a very expensive teacher. If you don’t want to pay the price to learn from those that have come before you.”
BE TRUE TO YOURSELF
“Sometimes they will not even present certain decisions to me because they can predict very easily how those decisions will sit in me and what stand I will take so it comes from being very consistent in your character, in your values and making yourself available so that people understand what they are and you become a little predictable, people trust predictable so be clear who you are and stick to that lane.”
FLEXIBILITY
“Do not be stiff and unbendable; for example when I was working in Airtel, we had to put on hijabs and go to mosques to talk to the Muslim community about the services they needed. I did that despite being a Christian.”
