Bisila Bokoko (Valencia, 1974) is a Spanish businesswoman who has settled in New York for over twenty years. She is of equatorial origin, she was executive director of the Spanish-United States Chamber of Commerce for seven years and is currently the CEO of BBES, a consulting firm that helps position brands in international markets. She is most excited about establishing libraries in Africa with the African Literacy Project and giving conferences around the world.
-Bisila Bokoko is described as a business woman, entrepreneur, philanthropist, lecturer. How would you describe yourself?
-I define myself as a woman in constant evolution, more as a son, wife, sister, friend than all these labels. I like to see myself more as the person I am. And he is a person who wants to be in the business of doing good.
How can a business woman like you be successful? With philanthropy, in another way?
-I think most of the time when we think about how to do good, we always think of philanthropy, which is not a word I feel particularly identifying with, although I’ve often been described that way. Doing good is a way of being in the world, a way of exercising leadership, and when I talk about leadership, I’m not just talking about positions of responsibility.
-What is leadership for you?
– For me, leadership is a way of communicating and sharing your purpose with other people. Often, leadership is understood as holding positions of responsibility or being the boss, but I think it’s dedication to your cause and people around you understand that commitment and want to be a part of that commitment. I also believe that the leader should be a humanist. We talk about the company as an entity outside of us, and for me we are the company, they are the people who make up the company. For me, humanistic leadership is leadership of the 21st century. I believe in the leadership of the people by the people for the people.
–Looking at her trajectory, she’s had a successful career. What is the password?
After all, I think it’s more of an obstacle course. And I am very aware of all the falls. I also took responsibility for the falls because I often caused them out of my own ego, my own arrogance. Sometimes, so to speak, when you’re successful at a very young age, you get caught up in that ego, and in my case, I finally realized that success is freedom for me. I come from a business culture where reaching numbers, achieving goals is so important, there were very few women 30 years ago (in the international arena) and I really need to prove it. And this perfectionism made me make a lot of mistakes. And that wasn’t success because he hadn’t really experienced it as success either. Success is freedom, not the money you have or the ‘hits’ or the people you meet, but the freedom to do what you truly love.
–She says success comes in her youth, but it didn’t have to be easy for a black woman growing up in Valencia in the ’70s.
– Logically, it was very difficult growing up in Spain where there wasn’t a lot of diversity. She already bore the weight of being a woman, and besides… she was black. I used to go to many meetings and people would jump twice when they saw me. If I had previously spoken in my perfect Spanish on the phone or communicated by letter, facial expressions would have changed when many people met me because they didn’t think I was black. So of course it had some weight, but I didn’t want it to make me a victim of circumstances. On the contrary, I wanted to turn this situation into a competitive advantage. So, instead of going to meetings and thinking, look, I’m black and I’m a woman, I thought that might be an advantage, because I’m multicultural and because I’m a woman, I have things. the intuition and abilities that I can put at the service of the company. I always say that you have two choices in life: you can choose to be the creator of your life and change the history a little, or be a victim of circumstances. That is, I cannot change the social situation in Spain in relation to different people, but I can change how I see myself.
What role does education play in your career?
– Absolutely everything to see. Again, I had the great advantage of having parents who were very devoted to education from several generations. My family was born in an environment where education was important anyway. They both came to Spain to study and both went to university. On the other hand, my family, as a multicultural staff, knew that what they showed me at school was not enough for the education I needed, so they made my education useless, and in this way, they made me read a lot about understanding slavery. colonization, pan-Africanism, blackness. I was brought up very openly. It hasn’t been a normal education but has had everything to do with my path.
-Is that why you supported a literacy project in Africa?
– I was a decaf African. I knew about Africa from books, but I only set foot on the continent until I was 35 years old. And on that trip I was meeting a lot of people who had no access to education whatsoever. Such things happened on that journey that if I had known Africa through books, they could have known the world too. And that’s where the library project started. I had a privileged upbringing and you wouldn’t believe it when you see other people not touching a book with their hands.
How did this project develop?
-The project is still small. The truth is that it has had a lot more visibility in recent years, but it has been around since 2010 and started with a library in Ghana. He later traveled to Uganda, Zimbabwe and Kenya. We have our own libraries there. We have cooperated in Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Cameroon and other countries. Thanks to Spain, we sent 20,000 books to Equatorial Guinea last year. Since the students of the University of Equatorial Guinea did not have their own books, all Spanish universities stepped in and donated books to us. It is vital for us to have this transfer of knowledge, with which we are so connected from one country to another but also so far away.
–What is your vision for Africa?
I describe myself as an ‘afrothymist’. If Africa was previously described as a hopeless, forgotten continent, what I see is a very dynamic, very creative, very young population with a desire to do something. He has a great entrepreneurial spirit. Of course, Africa has 54 countries, you can’t talk about Africa like that in general. But I believe that there are countries that give very good news, develop very well and make progress.
-Well, how do you evaluate Europe’s approach to migration?
-We always see Africa as a threat, they come here to ‘invade’. And this wouldn’t have happened if it was seen on a more collaborative level. After seeing a little bit about the geopolitical situation that exists in Europe today and how resources make us dependent on other countries, I think we should have a much more collaborative culture and maybe our neighbor Africa could be the partner we’re looking for. and that we don’t look. I think it would be very interesting for Europe to look at Africa differently, as a partner rather than a threat.
-And is this the responsibility of the political class, the economic class, the society?
I think this is everyone’s responsibility. Many people have a completely distorted vision of Africa, stuck with images of Ethiopia from 30 years ago. But there is another Africa that is much more dynamic, and I think it’s a matter of corporate responsibility that businessmen look there to see the economic potential that can exist.
-He was the head of the US-Spain Chamber of Commerce for several years and now as a consultant he helps Spanish companies position themselves in international markets. How is the Spanish brand?
-There has always been a problem with not believing that the Spanish brand is a good brand. While I was in the Room, a lot of people came with that complex. The Spanish brand continues to have great potential. And I think it’s very important that we believe that and feel that we can open up to the world and have a leading position in international markets.
-Is there an entrepreneurial spirit in Spain?
-Well, I can say that there is no shortage because I have seen Spanish businessmen go to remote places to sell without knowing the language, having no idea about the country. In other words, I don’t think we missed it but what I believe is that we don’t understand that word well yet. But I believe there are always entrepreneurs who open many doors. However, we are not comfortable with that term, yet we see the entrepreneur as brave and daring. I even believe that the subject of the entrepreneur comes from the fear of failure, what will they say? This fear slows us down a lot in Spain and the entrepreneur will fail because that’s part of the way, he’s learning.
–So do you have to lose your fear and start and fail?
-I think so too. You have to befriend fear because it’s scary to venture out. But when your dreams are bigger than your fears, you will.