Resonate Workshops’ CEO Norette Turimuci takes the mic during a Segal Family Foundation discussion on the leadership transition between Turimuci and founder Ayla Schlosser. (Image courtesy of Segal Family Foundation)
One of the latest trends in the development world is leadership localization, a term that describes a usually Western funder’s effort to shift power to usually non-Western local communities, and thus create a more meaningful presence in the countries where their grantees implement programs.
Done well, the benefits of localization are many. For one, it’s easier to serve a local community when senior leadership is nearby and in tune with local issues. It also facilitates team involvement in planning and strategizing, often speeding up decision-making processes and imparting a greater sense of ownership among staff. Time differences become less problematic, especially when urgent matters arise, and it often eases collaboration with local governments due to in-person contact and contextual familiarity. Working with a leader who has a similar or at least more-relatable background can also boost staff morale and confidence.
However, while more and more organizations are shifting leadership in this direction, especially on the African continent, the discourse has tended to focus more on the why than the how. The argument for the adoption of many novel concepts tends to come first and the best practices second, so this isn’t surprising. But because localization risks appearing—and sometimes ends up being—disingenuous, organizations must understand how to do it in ways that won’t undermine their work or generate distrust from the communities with whom they engage.
Segal Family Foundation, a trust-based funder focused on social justice in Africa, has approached leadership this way for more than a decade. We’ve seen several organizations originally founded and led by non-Africans evolve toward local leadership, and our own grantmaking team is entirely African, based in Africa, and supporting African-led organizations. We recently sat down with some of these leaders, old and new, to dig into what made their transition to localized leadership work.
Four Strategies for Localizing Leadership
The most important ingredients for a smooth handover, especially for organizations transitioning from foreign to local leadership, are preparation and transparency. In the case of our grantee Komera, a young women’s empowerment organization based in Rwanda, Canadian founder Margaret Butler made it clear from the start that she intended to hand the organization over to an African woman and entirely local staff. When Butler decided to step aside in 2020, a decade after Komera’s founding, the news was received well by the team, and Dativah Bideri, a Rwandan woman, assumed leadership within a year.
But it doesn’t always happen that way; the need for localized leadership often emerges later in an organization’s lifecycle. This was the case with Resonate Workshops, a leadership development organization for girls and women across East Africa. Two years after its founding, Ayla Schlosser began planning to transition her executive director position to a local leader. This decision followed the departure of Rwandan co-founder Solange Imapanoyimana, after which Schlosser realized it didn’t make sense for a white American woman to be running an organization that works to empower Black African women.
While every organization evolves differently, a few concrete best practices emerged during our conversations with these leaders that can help guide any team undertaking this kind of transition.
1. Do it before you become a ticking time bomb! Outgoing leaders should plan to exit while they’ll still miss the organization instead of waiting for burnout to set in. This allows for a mindful handover at a relaxed pace and minimizes clashes that may arise from fatigue and transitional tensions. After all, the norm in many African cultures is for guests to leave when the hosts most want them to stay longer, thus preempting the overextension of grace and preserving goodwill for future encounters.
Building localization into your strategic plan facilitates this. In 2017, Schlosser set a three-year target, with measurable milestones, to transition Resonate to African leadership. This coincided with the hiring of Burundian-born Norette Turimuci as the Rwanda country director. Noticing her potential, Schlosser raised the possibility of having her eventually take over as executive director, giving Turimuci even more of a stake in the organization and helping focus her sights.
Schlosser also found it helpful to project-manage her departure, knowing that founders naturally feel intertwined with the organizations they build and can develop sticky feet. To get the wheels rolling, she created a Gantt chart for transition handover and a contingency plan in case the news leaked ahead of time (especially to funders). Handling the process in this manner freed her up toward the end to reflect on her time with the organization.
2. Transition both leadership and power. While there’s a certain security in an organization’s outgoing leader remaining involved in some capacity, both Butler and Turimuci caution against the outgoing leader becoming the board chair. Instead, they recommend that outgoing leaders assume the role of an advisor, cheerleader, and friend, and defer to the new leader when consulted. The soft power an outgoing, foreign leader might wield on the board can create a skewed dynamic that inadvertently overshadows the incoming local leader. It’s vital to give the new head a chance to set their own tone, while also identifying their needs, particularly confidence gaps, and providing encouragement accordingly.
At Resonate, Schlosser gradually took a back seat at meetings and in decision-making so that Turimuci could start running the show.
3. Consider who else might leave. It’s not uncommon for the departure of a leader to be followed by the resignation of staff, especially when the change is abrupt or poorly planned. Reasons include uncertainty about the future and non-alignment with the incoming leader’s style or vision, which is sometimes heightened by cultural differences. Making time for individual and group conversations about anxieties and potential points of tension before and after the transition can help alleviate attrition.
Then comes the issue of managing the board: The boards of smaller organizations tend to comprise members who have a personal connection to the founder and might step down when the founder does. Reassembling boards, especially for organizations that have one on the ground and one abroad, can prove challenging for incoming local leaders who don’t have strong ties in the other country.
For Komera, this was less of a challenge by virtue of the organization’s deep local roots and the fact that the new leader, Bideri, had been on the team from the beginning.
4. Make it clear to funders that growth can look different during a handover. Leaders with particularly strong ties to certain funders may worry about the cessation of support in the wake of their departure. Priorities may also shift slightly during this time; organizations may need to put less emphasis on fundraising or programs, and more emphasis on internal restructuring. Outwardly, it can even seem like the organization has stalled, especially when the incoming leader is an external hire versus an internal promotion. To preempt this, leaders need to include funders in the transition.
Turimuci noted that one of Resonate’s biggest worries during the transition was whether funders would bow out. In response, Schlosser made a point of introducing her to funders early and directly, which helped create continuity.
Other Considerations
One of the reasons that guidance on how to approach localization leadership is insufficient is that there aren’t a lot of safe spaces in which to talk about it. Many founders worry that people will perceive the move as quitting due to obstacles like global funding biases and the vagaries of politics. Foreign founders in Africa who want to hand their organizations over to a local leader often contact Schlosser, and she’s one of the few who has spoken about it publicly.
It's best to approach conversations about leadership transitions both retrospectively and prospectively for a holistic picture, but thinking about continuity can be challenging—especially in cases where executive directors pull double duty as both a senior leader and programmatic staff. After being a one-person show in the early days and then closely involved in every aspect as the organization matured, such leaders often fear that the entire operation will collapse in their absence.
Turimuci encourages new leaders to ask themselves, “Am I the best person to do this job?” and adds that if a person has the necessary skills and experience and hails from the community the nonprofit aims to serve, then they are inherently better suited to the role than a non-local leader. This reflection brought about the second generation of localization at Resonate: Turimuci, again of Burundian origin, felt that a Rwandan woman should run the Rwanda-based organization. Despite sharing a border and having cultural similarities, the two countries are different in important ways. Thus, in 2022, Claire Uwineza took up the reins as CEO.
Turimuci strongly credits the African Visionary Fellowship with facilitating her own transition out of Resonate’s leadership. The leadership coaching program strengthened not only her skills, but also those of Resonate’s management team as she began to delegate more responsibilities. Eventually, she felt she could leave knowing the organization would remain in very capable hands. To encourage organizations to think about this and plan for sustainability, Segal Family Foundation’s Tanzania program officer Carolyn Kandusi likes to humorously ask, “What would you do if your leader suddenly got beamed up to Mars?” The lesson: Organizations should be sustainable as entities in and of themselves without being tied to a particular person.
Read more stories by Sylvia K. Ilahuka.