Leadership In Practice: Rebuilding A Nation After Trauma

Being a leader takes courage, patience, resilience and vision. Deogratias (Deo) Niyizonkiza, Founder and CEO, Village Health Works, has those leadership attributes and many more.

Deo was born into a loving yet poor family in Burundi. At the outbreak of the 1994 Hutu/Tutsi genocide in Rwanda/Burundi, Deo was attending medical school in Bujumbura, Burundi. One day a group of Hutus came to his dorm looking to kill any and all Tutsis. Deo hid under his bed.  After the perpetrators left, he fled to the woods of Burundi and Rwanda where he hid, while witnessing senseless slaughter, for six months. Continue reading “Leadership In Practice: Rebuilding A Nation After Trauma”

Despite Death Threats A Gay Leader Emerges In Afghanistan

After the shootings at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, by Omar Mateen, a U.S. resident of Afghan descent, we can’t help but revisit a past interview with Afghani gay activist, Nemat Sadat.  His intelligence and honesty on what it means to be gay in Afghanistan is extremely insightful.

All eyes are on the upcoming run off of the Afghanistan presidential election between Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani in mid June. But millions of Afghans are talking about a new emerging leader not on the ballot, Nemat Sadat, who happens to be gay.   Continue reading “Despite Death Threats A Gay Leader Emerges In Afghanistan”