Nama : Adinda Ridwan
NPM : 10212201
Kelas : 4EA12
Sumber : Forbes.com
Bisila Bokoko: An Entrepreneur's Leadership Journey
“It’s difficult to choose just one label,” Bisila Bokoko
tells me when we meet at The Ritz in Madrid recently. She has already greeted several
tables of friends on the way to our interview. Indeed, it this facility
to engage people that led to one of her latest ventures – creating libraries
for youngsters in Africa, the land of her grandparents.
Called The Bisila Bokoko African Literacy Project (BBALP),
it provides books and scholarships for some 10 children a year between the ages
of 6 to 10 years. And it happened one-on-one, in 2009, when she travelled to
Africa for the first time. “I met the Chief of Kokofu and Ghana, and he
appointed me ‘Queen Development mother,’” she explained, and so the library was
developed to foster education. She posted news of the project on her Facebook
account. And the project grew.
Facebook Connection
“I was on the way to
a World Economic Forum event in CapeTown, South Africa, in 2010,” she
remembers,” and a young man sent me a message through my Facebook account
explaining he was a lawyer and wanted to help the kids in his village of
Chirumanzo (near Harare) get an education. He took a bus all the way from
Harare to Cape Town, traveling for two days. And together we expanded the
library and scholarship project to other countries in Africa. He did everything
he said he would – really got it up and running, and it’s still going on even
though right now he’s studying in New Orleans on a scholarship.” The children
read and study English and their own rural language in the countries where
BBALP operates: Ghana, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda. “But if this one young man
hadn’t reached out to me through Facebook, none of this would have happened.”
It wouldn’t have happened had she not been the sort of person who would respond
to such an idea and approach, either.
The money for these sorts of non-profit ventures comes from
the rest of her eponymous empire, BBES (Bisila Bokoko Embassy International).
There are fashion projects, business consulting, inspirational speaking
engagements, and a wine business in Spain. It’s the enterprising energy she
gets from living in New York for the past 15 years.
“I went to New York
initially as an intern with the Valencia Institute of Export (IVEX) in 2000,”
she says of the posting that took her away from her native Valencia. “I was
determined to stay in New York once the internship was up, so I enrolled at
CCNY in 2001 and obtained a Masters degree in 2003. Meanwhile, the IVEX
promoted me to Director and then, in 2005, the Spanish-America Camber of
Commerce hired me as its Executive Director in,” she remembers. She’d already
received an MBA from the University of San Pablo in Madrid and a certificate of
British law from the University of Manchester.
“Circumstances beyond my control changed in Madrid in 2012,
and I found myself out of a job,” she remembers. “But I was determined to stay
in New York, and so I decided to become my own boss, and created BBES.”
She’d also started her wine business in 2010, with her
brother as a partner. It did not go well. ”We lost $100,000 in three years,”
she laments. “That was my savings, my bonuses…so we joined with another winery,
Ladron de Lunas.” Her wine business today – known as Bisila Wines – makes red,
white and sparkling wines, mostly for export. “China is our biggest market,”
she confides, “and then Germany. Then we make a range of tables wine for
weddings and for supermarkets such as El Corte Ingles.”
Global Business Development
BBES, her New York-based global business development
company, consults in fashion, lifestyle, arts and culture, largely for Spanish
companies looking to enter the U.S. Clients to-date include Pikolinos, Stand 7,
Agatha Ruiz de la Prada , and the Liceu Barcelona Opera House. “Art and culture
and fashion historically have not been well-marketed in Spain,” she opines. “We
have Zara and Carolina Herrera and Iberica jamon, but Spain really doesn’t yet
market brands. And in the U.S. they do. I did an exhibit at the Philadelphia
Art Museum around Salvador Dali on behalf of the Spanish-American Chamber of
Commerce in 2006. And I kept those kinds of things going after I left the job
in 2012 – a mix of fashion, wine, arts and culture.”
It was a leap into the void: no steady job, and two young
children to support. “I’d been helping entrepreneurs do business
but on behalf of the Spanish state, so it was the ‘safe side’ of
entrepreneurship,” she remembers. “Now I was taking the risks of an
entrepreneur, and I was really scared.”
Today she finds herself with a real interest in bringing
business to Africa. “People forget the amount of opportunities there are in
Africa,” she says. “This is not the Africa of the 1970s. We never had an industrial revolution in Africa and we may be 100
years behind the other countries, but today there is technology. A Maasai
tribesman may not be able to vote, but he has an iPhone and he can send a text
on What’s App.”
The name “Bisila” means “Mary” – spiritual guide and
protector of the people in Equatorial Guinea, land of her roots. “It’s the only
Spanish-speaking country in Africa,” she points out. Her great grandmother Dona
Pilar, Minister of Culture in the homeland, opened the pathway to Spain by
buying a vacation home in Valencia. “Then eventually my parents decided to
emigrate to Valencia, and that’s where I was born.” Bisila holds Spanish and
American citizenship. Her own children were born in the U.S. and are American
citizens.
She also has 120,000 Facebook friends, 17,000 Twitter
followers and another 8,000 on Instagram. But she still works her magic at the
grass roots level, inspiring one person at a time.
Bold : Simple Past Tense
Bold Miring : Simple Present Perfect
