Startup Story

Joan Mugenzi is the founder of Imagine Me Africa, based in Uganda. She is an International Coaching Federation Professional Certified Coach with 385 hours of coach training and over 750 hours of coaching, with a focus on employment transition. Whether a person is getting into a new job, moving into the next opportunity within the organization, grappling with management and leadership transition role, or planning on exiting, Joan enjoys facilitating the conversations. Joan has trained in coaching up to the highest level of coaching (Mastery), and wholly believes in the need for people to experience professional coaching. She is the founding and current president of the International Coaching Federation Uganda Chapter. Her focus is building Africa's coaching hub of choice.

LoA learned more about Joan Mugenzi’s impact driven approach to coaching and people development this month.

What does your company do?

Imagine Me Africa is a motivational training and coaching company. We design and implement employment transition programmes, tools and processes for the corporate person and corporate entities. As part of this process, we run events that are focused on personal development, where we challenge individuals to embrace their best versions.

What inspired you to start your company?

While working with World Vision International, there is a time we had a looming restructure. Our team leader briefed us about it and one of our colleagues wailed like she had just lost someone. This was really shocking for me. For as long as I knew her, she was in an international role so this reaction was traumatizing. I felt terrible that someone who had been in an international role for as long as I knew her couldn't process this news, where no one had been specifically pointed out as losing the job. In fact, the team leader was trying her best to ensure that she retained her entire team. I wondered why employees couldn't use the very tools they used to run excellent programmes on themselves. This wailing triggered me to think about how I could turn my gift into something that could help people. I had discovered at the age of 29 that I was an encourager, but always wondered how I could turn encouragement into a business.

In 2018, I signed up for a business class to understand how to run a business. I had never run even a tomato stall, so I desired to learn how to run a business, especially now that I had stepped out of employment the previous year. I needed to grow.

“There are no barriers to entry in the personal development space,” our lecturer said during our fourth module. This was disturbing. What kind of business runs with anything? Well, it sounds fancy for everyone to call themselves a coach. My concern was, how do you get the genuine ones? How does one create barriers? Although I had trained as a Jack Canfield Success Principles Coach, and possibly the only certified one in Uganda, at the time I could not nail it. It would be a lonely journey.

I went on a search for a coach training programme I could do and chanced on the Coach Masters Academy. A class with six Ugandans, and two foreign students from Kenya and Nigeria respectively. In this class I spoke to the host of the programme, and told him, we better figure out how to grow a professional coaching community in Uganda. After qualifying as a professional coach, I signed up for membership with the International Coaching Federation (ICF); I wanted to figure out how to go about creating a coaching community.

I am happy that the conversation grew and I met with like-minded coaches from Strathmore Business School in Uganda, this culminated into the ICF Uganda Chapter. Having this tribe has given me the confidence to operate knowing that as I engage, there are many speaking the same language. I am a motivational trainer and an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC), with over 750 hours of professional coaching. I have done coach training up to the highest level and hold a certification from Coach Masters Academy as a Transformational Master Coach. With over 20 years of global experience, training and facilitating audiences in 30 countries (including East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America), experience gained while working with World Vision International, a humanitarian Christian international NGO operating in about 100 countries and consultancy with various organisations, I endeavor to create world class programmes that will enable you achieve yours and your organizational goals.

At Imagine Me Africa, we offer Employment Transition Coaching services, where we passionately love serving people who are trying to answer the question: What Next?

I work with various professionals in Uganda and across the globe. I am currently involved with two global entities, one as a career coach for female journalists with WAN-IFRA’s Women in News Programme, and together with two other coaches we offer external Executive Coaching services for VillageReach’s Global Management Team spread across Europe, Sub Saharan Africa, and the USA.

As a coach I believe every person is DUE. DUE is simply an acronym that is embedded in the understanding that each person can only blossom when they Discover who they are truly meant to be, hence live a purposeful life; Uncover what their true values, perceptions about life, assumptions, limiting beliefs are and then, Evolve into who they are truly meant to be. I believe that in each individual is hidden potential waiting to be tapped. The inmost desire is only expressed through words, and only through engaging in conversations with a professional coach can people figure out what has been standing in their way and therefore boldly step out.

When I am doing Imagine Me Africa work, I spend a significant amount of time advocating for the coaching profession ensuring its growth and visibility in Uganda and the rest of Africa using different platforms. I am the Founding President of ICF Uganda, a chapter that was formed in a record two months (a record not experienced in the history of ICF, and also grew the chapter to Charter Chapter status (50 members) within a period of one year and nine months against a globally set target of three years.

I am also part of Coach Masters Academy as a Director of Training for Uganda where I train, supervise and mentor coaches preparing for credentialing at Associate Certified Coach and Professional Certified Coach levels. I hold a Master’s degree in Public Health leadership (pride in providing health for the mind!), and a post graduate diploma in Journalism and Media management.

Why should anyone use your service or product?

We are addressing a challenge that every employee is likely to face in their lifetime. Every employee will one time lose a job, best case scenario, when they reach retirement age. Other scenarios are restructuring, shocks like the COVID19 pandemic, disability, illness of a loved one, personal sickness and all. We support individuals through the employment cycle for both good - career planning and transitioning, but also for eventualities. No employee should be caught unawares.

Tell us a little about your team

I basically still operate as a self-employed entrepreneur with systems around me. We are a simple team of two full time staff but led by an Advisory Board that keeps us on track ensuring we have all our systems in place, ensuring compliance and good governance. We then work with a team of eight Associates. We are deliberate about this business model because we know it helps us keep our operational costs manageable, but it also enables us to pay our Associates decently. This structure has enabled us to attract meaningful assignments and now we are on a journey of creating a coaching hub.

Our team of coaches is one on a continuous quest for exploration. All our coaches have either completed the advanced level of coach training or done their mastery training and are members of the International Coaching Federation. This level of equipping and a commitment to global professional standards only means their conversations are far deepening in terms of giving you great introspection and a learning experience. We believe that coaching should provide our clients with an opportunity to do deeper self-introspection, experience a mindset shift and evoke change from within.

Our team is also vastly exposed and has provided coaching and held strategic engagements with clients across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. Among the countries covered are Australia, Brazil, Burundi, Chad, DRC, Ethiopia, France, Ghana, Germany, Hong Kong, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Sweden, UAE, Tanzania, Uganda, United Kingdom, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The team has also offered coaching to multi-sectoral teams and individuals covering financial services, NGO sector, Faith Based Organisations, Public sector, and the UN Agencies among others. To meet your needs as a client, we give you a minimum of three blinded coaching profiles from which you choose a potential match for you.

Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And do you come from an entrepreneurial background?

Part of this is covered under what inspired me to start the company. However, it has been learning on the job. My family didn't have any entrepreneurs that I could look up to. In fact, when I left an International job, it was traumatizing for some of my family members. They thought I was out of my mind.

What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?

Turning Imagine Me Africa into an African coaching hub of choice. We are intentional about offering quality professional coaching services and this has dictated who we onboard. When a client has a bad coaching experience, they will send word around. We pride in offering enhanced transformational and transcendence coaching experience.

What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?

Nothing is as exciting as touching the lives of individuals and seeing them have a lightbulb moment in the process. A client whose dream is to become among the top taxpayers in my country has grown her employee base from under 10 to 45; a university lecturer who had to give up one of her side teaching roles and put that time into farming, and now has several acreages of mechanized farming; a prime news anchor whose dream to become a prime news anchor was achieved in four months instead of the five years she had for her career roadmap.

What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?

The world needs your uniqueness. Your uniqueness might sound as vague as me saying I am an encourager, but now building a coaching hub. Embrace your purpose, step out with courage and boldness, and do not listen to your inner critic.

Contact or follow Imagine Me Africa

TWITTER | PINTEREST | YOUTUBE | EMAIL joanmugenzi@gmail.com

Why LoA loves it…

One of the most challenging things for many women entrepreneurs is being able to tap fully into their potential and realize their goals. Often, specialist coaching is needed to help free up that potential, to free up the mind, and to focus attention on what needs to be done. Joan Mugenzi is a entrepreneur and specialist coach who knows how to get the best out of people, to get them thinking differently, and to instilling self belief in order to see that potential fulfilled. She is on a mission to positively change lives through business and personal coaching. — Melanie Hawken, founder & ceo, Lionesses of Africa