What Happened
Bola Matel-Okoh is carving out leadership opportunities for African women in business at a time when such paths are rarely handed to anyone. Rather than waiting for existing institutions to open their doors, she is actively constructing new access points, mentorship structures, and visibility for women who would otherwise remain invisible to decision-makers. Her work represents a deliberate, strategic bet on a population that has been systematically overlooked.
The Communication Angle
Here is the question worth asking: When you are fighting for people whose voices have been excluded, how do you make the powerful actually listen?
Most advocates fail at this because they lead with grievance. They walk into rooms and immediately describe what has gone wrong, who has been left out, and why the system is broken. That approach puts decision-makers on the defensive. The moment someone feels accused, they stop processing your argument. They start building a rebuttal. You have lost them before you finished your opening sentence.
Matel-Okoh appears to be operating on a fundamentally different principle. She is not asking gatekeepers to feel guilty. She is showing them what they are missing. That is the shift. Reframe the excluded group not as a problem to fix but as an asset being wasted. "You are leaving capability on the table" lands infinitely harder than "you have been unfair." One activates self-interest. The other activates defensiveness.
This is the core of persuasion that actually moves people: you have to translate your cause into their language. African women in leadership are not just a justice issue. They are an untapped market, a talent pipeline, and a competitive advantage for any organization smart enough to recognize it. Matel-Okoh understands this. She is building the structural proof, not just making the emotional appeal.
The third layer here is visibility strategy. Building a path for others requires that you first become visible yourself. You cannot pull people up a ladder nobody can see. By positioning herself publicly as the architect of this movement, she creates a beacon. Other women see the path because they see her walking it. That is intentional leadership communication, and it is far rarer than it should be.
This is exactly the kind of scenario I break down in Say It Right Every Time. The chapter on reframing your audience's motivation gives you a direct framework for translating what you care about into language that activates the person across the table. The technique is simple but most people never use it because they are too focused on being right instead of being heard.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Key Takeaway
Before your next pitch, presentation, or advocacy conversation, strip out every sentence that explains why something is unfair and replace it with a sentence that explains what the other person stands to gain. Write it down first. One sentence. "If you do this, here is what you get." Lead with that. Save the justice argument for after you have their interest, not before.
