Fanny Kondowe

I believe in being selective about who I receive advice from. Yes, having support from friends and family helps, but I've learned that you need to be open to receive advice without taking advice from everywhere, because sometimes advice from everywhere can destroy the goals that you have. What I have learned in my life is to have specific people for different needs. If I want professional advice, I go to certain people. If I want emotional consolation or just need to cry, I have someone else in my life that I go to. I have separated all those things in my life to say if I want advice from professional people, I go for them. For relationship advice, it has to be someone else. I don't think everybody else can give me advice, but I believe there are certain people that are placed in my life for a reason, and I go to them for that help only. My family and friends have been amazing. Even as I'm here, they're always like, you know what, you can do it, we believe you. Having support from friends and family is always vital in success, but you need to listen to the good advice, because some people will just throw advice anyhow and you get confused with your dreams and you don't know what to do.

I believe every woman, if they have determination, they can do it. The scary part comes in knowing, oh, you know, maybe I'm older, I can't do this, or maybe I've done things, I can't do this. Coming from Malawi and coming from a place where I had to go through things, I feel there's been a lot of limitations of thinking I can't do it because of what I have gone through, or because maybe what other women have gone through. My encouragement to every woman, or younger woman, who feels like, I think I can, but I don't have the resources, or I don't have that, is to have the determination. With the determination, keep on pressing on, keep on trying. I'm sure one day they can do it. I have my motto in life: I say determination is the goal, no matter what. Even if it takes you like 40 years to find your way, you will find it. There's no limit.

As I just finished school, I'm also looking for jobs, and there's competition. For me to be in the communication field right now, it's about keeping up with the game, and it's not just about, okay, I finish school and then tomorrow you find work. It's a lot of working beyond just the education itself. The challenges that I am facing, what everybody else is facing, is finding the right job. Finding jobs is always hard. But there are also opportunities. When you have the opportunities, I kid you not, it's a very good program to be in. I enjoy strategic communication and public relations, and just knowing that you can do more than just talking and all that, it gives me hope to say there's more to it than just getting a degree. The challenges of finding maybe jobs can be challenging, and I'm in a strange world, so for me to find, to know myself, like where do I get the job, for now it's hard, but I believe there are also opportunities in this field.

The most important thing for me is working with excellence. I learned from someone who told me to say, as you're working, you should be the best of you. You have to be the best of you. No one else should be you. You should be you. And if you can be you and give it the best, they'll remember you wherever you go. If you just work for the sake of, I'm just going to work for the paycheck, then at the end of it, you don't achieve what you want. Even as you're working with excellence, you also need to learn how to respect people that you work with, even the bosses you have. I have learned to do that even in the people that I have in my life. It helps a lot when you respect other people, when you value other people, showing empathy. It brings in the ability to relate to them properly without issues, but you can't be working with excellence when you don't know how to respect the people. The last one I would say is be responsible. I think in whatever I do in my life, I have learned to just take ownership. When people are not seeing you, are you going to work because they see you, or you're working because that's your job? I'll give you an example: when I was working with Radio ABC, I headed the program for 15 years, and a lot of people used to say, how do you do it? I'm like, I take it as my baby. This is what is feeding me, putting food on the table now. So if I am working with integrity, knowing that nobody always sees me, and I'm responsible for my job, I'll give it all my best. The excellence comes in knowing that this is what is making you eat on the table. If you're respecting other people, we can be able to collaborate, we can be able to communicate without thinking, oh, somebody doesn't talk to me, or somebody doesn't do this, because you don't respect each other.